Californian Fires Destroy Trees Used In Carbon Credit Scheme

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One of the largest wildfires in California’s history has burnt through swaths of forest earmarked for conservation under carbon credit plans backed by companies including oil refining and power groups.

The blaze so far covering 450,000 acres, known as the Park Fire, has destroyed around 45,000 acres of trees enrolled in California’s carbon offset programme, according to estimates by non-profit research group CarbonPlan.

Other fires earlier this year also affected more than 29,000 acres of forest in Washington state and New Mexico that are also part of California’s carbon credit programme, according to the analysis, with buyers including Chevron, Shell and BP.

The Californian programme gives forest owners credits for preserving trees in an effort to store and absorb carbon, with the credits then sold to other businesses to offset their pollution.

The Park Fire includes parcels that belong to the second-largest US lumber company, the family-owned Sierra Pacific Industries, which was registered to sell credits to companies which include them in their climate plans.

A distributor of oil-based products, Tricor Refining, and energy trading group Rainbow Energy Marketing Corporation were among the buyers of credits from forests affected by the Park Fire. They did not immediately comment.

In New Mexico, Chevron bought 1.77mn credits from a forest management project run by the Mescalero Apache tribe, according to CarbonPlan, which lost about 6 per cent of its area to fire earlier this summer. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment

Shell bought around 145,000 credits linked to burnt areas in Washington state, while BP North America purchased around 1.4mn credits from the same project. Neither company immediately replied to request for comment.

The scale of the wildfires and their destruction of forests designated for conservation under carbon credit schemes has prompted concern over the sustainability of carbon credit forestry projects in wildfire-prone areas.

The Californian programme includes a “buffer pool” that is not sold but intended to replace losses caused by wildfires, pests, drought, or other unforeseen events that wipe out credited trees.

Every project that is allowed to generate credits contributes between 10 to 20 per cent of its credits to the buffer pool.

But researchers are now concerned that the pool is not large enough to cover the scale of the burning witnessed across western US states.

Around 6.6mn credits from California’s buffer pool are earmarked to replace forest damaged by fire over the 100 year lifespan of current projects, according to CarbonPlan analysis.

However, wildfires have already required the use of around 11mn buffer pool credits over the past decade, according to CarbonPlan, meaning credits earmarked for other risks have been used to cover wildfire losses.

The California Air Resources Board, which manages the programme, said the overall size of the buffer was “quite sound”, with a balance of close to 28mn credits.

But Grayson Badgley, a research scientist with CarbonPlan, said California needed to update the number of credits held in the buffer to reflect the realities of wildfire risk across the state.

“The scale and frequency of these fires have me concerned that the buffer components have not been appropriately set,” said Badgley. The state should stop approving carbon credit projects in “risky wildfire regions”, he added.

California has been experiencing an particularly intense fire season, according to the state’s forestry and fire authorities.

While the number of fires burning in the state over the summer months was in line with the five year average, the number of acres burnt was much higher than the five year average, the department of forestry and fire protection said.

A “hotter than normal” June combined with an “unusually wet winter and spring” resulted in a lot of dense vegetation being more susceptible to ignition and fire spread than in previous years, it said.

“Climate predictions are indicating above normal temperatures for all of California, resulting in an abnormally high fire risk for the remainder of the year,” it noted.