E&E ClimateWire: Forest group asks EPA to include offsets in power plant rule

Tiffany Stecker
May 14, 2014
E&E ClimateWire

A California forest group has asked U.S. EPA to consider offsets as a way for utilities to comply with the agency’s upcoming standards for existing power plants.

The Pacific Forest Trust, which represents private forest owners, wants the agency to adopt the California Air Resources Board’s methods for buying and selling forest carbon offsets under A.B. 32, the state’s cap-and-trade law.

Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust, said the organization wants EPA to make a distinction between general incentives to improve forest stewardship and those that can demonstrably reduce carbon emissions.

“Carbon you can count on,” she said in an interview with ClimateWire.

Wayburn has drafted a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on behalf of forest landowners, businesses and nongovernmental organizations, urging EPA to use standards that are at least as strong as California’s.

In order to generate offsets under the California Air Resources Board’s approach, forest carbon projects must ensure that carbon will be stored for a minimum of 100 years, that they come from forests that are native or natural to an area, and that they are additional to what is already required by law.

There is a growing carbon credit market that feeds into the California’s demand for offsets, she added.

Punching ‘holes’ in the carbon sink

“You have a system that people can work with, both for delivering quality in the atmosphere and for landowners,” she said. “Introducing a different standard would create enormous confusion in that market.”

EPA is set to propose a rule to limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act by June 1. One of the looming questions has been whether EPA will apply an “outside the fence line” approach to the seldom-used section in the law. This would allow utilities to use a variety of mechanisms — demand-side efficiency measures, carbon pricing or emissions trading, for example — that go beyond the grounds, or fence, of a power plant.

Many states have asked EPA to make compliance with the rule as flexible as possible, but some experts have said that EPA may be stretching its administrative authority if it adopts an outside-the-fence-line approach (E&ENews PM, Feb. 20).

The ability to use forest offsets could be especially beneficial for coal-heavy states like Kentucky and West Virginia.

“From the atmosphere’s point of view, you really want to reduce to emissions as soon as possible,” Wayburn said.

The United States loses on average about 1 million acres of forests per year, the equivalent of more than 2.6 billion tons of CO2 over the last 20 years. With the economy on an upturn, the potential for clearing forests for development presses on the need for forest protection through offsets.

“That keeps punching so many holes in the carbon sink, and it keeps draining out,” she said.

The Pacific Forest Trust is currently circulating the letter to potential signatories.

Correction: An earlier version of this story indicated that forest loss results in 2.6 billion tons of CO2 emitted annually. This number refers to carbon emissions over a 20-year period.

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