A Tree Grows (and Glows) on Wall Street

A Tree Grows (and Glows) on Wall Street

By Rob Banner

The electricity on the New York Stock Exchange floor was supercharged. A bolt surged through everyone waiting when the bell finally rang opening trading for the day. It’s estimated that a half trillion dollars change hands on a good day. This past April 28th, it might as well have been a half trillion kilowatts.

There, with their hands on the bell, stood W. Carey Crane III and Chandler Van Voorhis, co-founders of GreenTrees, based in The Plains, surrounded by their colleagues. Their faces were giddy. For a few minutes, they owned all of New York City, no less. What they’ve accomplished is as innovative as it gets in business merely because their idea is so simple.

“All we had to do was plant a tree,” said Carey, who recently celebrated his 70th birthday. Keeping it simple, however, would take the next 20 years to distill a perfect model, always a work in progress. “We knew it would be hard.”

Forget how long it took. The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) that owns the NYSE has honored them for their remarkable achievement. Today, ICE is endorsing GreenTrees as a world leader. Soon, it will introduce a global auction of GreenTrees’ carbon credits to Fortune 500 giants hungry to buy their entire inventory.

Like many, this success story begins in the late Maggie Bryant’s storied living room. Chandler’s father, Dutch Van Voorhis, introduced his son to Carey Crane, Maggie Bryant’s son, launching a true family affair. The elder Van Voorhis later became the company’s CEO. Chandler calls him “Our rudder” guiding day-today operations through uncharted waters where there are no rules.

There’s no playbook, just an unwavering dedication to create a solid, repeatable path. The best news? Landowners get paid for simply growing trees, while conservation gets a free ride. This is one carbon removal project that makes money while countless others are still trying.

“We grow 50 million trees across 135,000 acres, but we don’t own any of the land,” Carey said. “We could never get to scale if we owned the land and, it’s all about scale.” To get there, they partner with 550 landowners and split the revenue as the credits sell. Their distributions last year totaled more than $8 million.

Initially, planting young trees in the Mississippi Delta was the goal, and the carbon credit was how they would keep score. Carey admitted, “It wasn’t worth much early on … $3 or $4 a credit.” The Wall Street Journal called it a boondoggle.

Yet, consider GreenTrees’ latest sales bring 10-12 times that. Each year, their trees generate nearly a million credits, all verified by an independent, third-party registry. Some boondoggle.

No one takes credit for the success. Carey and Chandler modestly point at one another. They began as a team and are still anchored in collaborative innovation. Chandler can’t remember a substantial disagreement, ever, and they remain close friends.

Carey estimated their “team” now includes more than 1,000 “friends of the project.”

Said Chandler, “Probably more. We reinvent ourselves every day.”

As the market leader, it’s their responsible oath to do it in a way that is totally defensible.

“Innovation is constantly happening,” Carey said. “You cannot be afraid of what the future holds.”

Rob Banner is senior project officer for GreenTrees.