Global Warming and CO2 Emissions Blog

Consumers in California will soon be given te option to pay a little bit more for their utilities to offset their carbon dioxide emissions.

The non-profit California Climate Action Registry was set up by the state six years ago to encourage corporations and government agencies to track and reduce their emissions. The Forest Protocols program will allow consumers to pay to preserve enough trees to offset their personal carbon emissions.

The registry has calculated how much the timber industry loses by allowing trees to grow longer and bigger - past the time they're normally harvested. The industry would then be compensated by other companies that buy carbon credits - or shares of the trees - to offset their carbon emissions.

The Pacific Forest Trust manages the five parcels of timberland owned by the Fred M. van Eck Forest Foundation, and they jointly registered the 2,100-acre property with the state. Negotiations are underway to set the prices for its carbon credits.

For example, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. in January asked the California Public Utilities Commission to let it start a program next year where customers could choose to pay about 3% more on each monthly bill, with the money earmarked to preserve trees in a registered forest.

The utility pumps about 5.3 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year to supply the electricity and natural gas used by a typical household. If the homeowner opted to pay about $4.31 each month to be invested in forests, the trees would store an equivalent amount of carbon.

"It would cost them about $4.31 a month to become climate neutral," said Wendy Pulling, PG&E's director of environmental policy.

PG&E is the first utility in the nation seeking such a program for its five million electric and 4.2 million natural gas customers, Pulling said. The company serves about 14 million people in northern and central California.

If the utilities commission approves the plan later this year, PG&E projects that about 5% of its customers would participate, generating about $20 million annually. That would support a number of trees equal to taking 350,000 cars off the road, Pulling said.

The money would be invested in forests like the van Eck property in Humboldt County, which is the first to start sending carbon storage information to the state registry.

Go, California! Where are the feds??

Labels: California, carbon dioxide emissions, environmental activism, global warming