Harnessing Farms and Forests in the Low-Carbon Economy : How to Create, Measure, and Verify Greenhouse Gas Offsets

As the United States moves to a low-carbon economy in order to combat global warming, credits for reducing carbon dioxide emissions will increasingly become a commodity that is bought and sold on the open market. Farmers and other landowners can benefit from this new economy by conducting land management practices that help sequester carbon dioxide, creating credits they can sell to industry to “offset” industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.

This guide is the first comprehensive technical publication providing direction to landowners for sequestering carbon and information for traders and others who will need to verify the sequestration. It will provide invaluable direction to farmers, foresters, land managers, consultants, brokers, investors, regulators, and others interested in creating consistent, credible greenhouse gas offsets as a tradable commodity in the United States.

The guide contains a non-technical section detailing methodologies for scoping of the costs and benefits of a proposed project, quantifying offsets of various sorts under a range of situations and conditions, and verifying and registering the offsets. The technical section provides specific information for quantifying, verifying, and regulating offsets from agricultural and forestry practices.

Visit the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions website for audio from the press conference announcing the book.
Read the press release announcing the book.

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University is a nonpartisan institute that engages with decision-makers in government, the private sector, and the nonprofit community to develop innovative proposals that address critical environmental challenges, with offices at Duke University and in Washington, D.C.

Zach Willey is a Senior Economist at Environmental Defense, a leading national nonprofit organization that links science, economics, and law to create innovative, equitable, and cost-effective solutions to society’s most urgent environmental problems. Willey specializes in developing economic solutions to greenhouse gas emission and natural resource degradation problems in terrestrial ecosystems. Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, is former chief scientist of Environmental Defense and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.