Purchasing Carbon Removal Tons with GreenTrees
60 MILLION
TREES PLANTED BY GREENTREES AND OUR LANDOWNERS
6.3 MILLION
TONS OF CARBON SEQUESTERED
40 SPECIES
OF HABITAT RESTORED
3.4 BILLION
LITERS OF WATER STORED IN THE FORESTED ECOSYSTEM
GreenTrees: The Global Leader in Reforestation Carbon Credits
GreenTrees is the largest U.S. Reforestation project with a 99.64% market share of ex post facto vital credits issued to date.
GreenTrees accounts for 44% of all U.S. voluntary credits and 11% of global credits, not including REDD+.
GreenTrees has invested and/or distributed over $100mil in a public/private partnership model. Our programmatic approach helps to ensure project performance.
| Registry | American Carbon Registry | |
| Nature Based Type | Removal [Afforestation/Reforestation] | |
| Approach | Programmatic Aggregation | |
| Geography | US South | |
| Total Acres | 133,000+ | |
| Number of Parcels | 600+ | |
| Verifications | 12 | |
| Total Tons | 6,293,482 | |
| Eligibility | CORSIA Eligible | |
The Growth of GreenTrees
As a programmatic aggregator, GreenTrees is structured as a pool of landowners that grow in two ways — 1) as the trees grow year over year and 2) as new lands enter the pool. Because of our structure, GreenTrees has never had a reversal in its 20-year history, ensuring the highest level of permanence, atmospheric impact, and integrity.
For a reversal to happen in the GreenTrees Project, the pool of assets would have to go negative year over year. Unlike most projects where various risks could occur, creating a single point of failure, our programmatic aggregator approach creates an insurance mechanism through the structure. While there could be various impacts on individual GreenTrees lands over time, the impacts of such would mean the pool only grew by so much.
Would your business like to purchase carbon credits?
Contact us for more information about our carbon credits.
Carbon Investment Profile
GreenTrees partners with landowners to reforest lands. When we developed our planting approach, we looked to nature as our guide, mimicking what nature would do on her own over many years by compressing time and space. In our system, the faster the trees grow, the faster they earn a climate dividend. Utilizing our cottonwood hardwood interplanting, the landowner can grow a bottomland hardwood forest much faster.
GreenTrees has built a mobile platform for both the consumer and business-facing sectors. This platform enables a price and value to be attributed and block chained linked to the growth of forests. Our Advanced Carbon Restored Ecosystem (ACRE) mechanism sweeps up all the rights associated with the restoration and/or conservation of each physical acre of land. ACRE is becoming a currency more and more. Think of ACRE as a derivative unit from land that value appreciates over time. The ACRE mechanism becomes a tradable instrument, leading to more investment dollars flowing into this market.
The Verification Process - Four Levels of Assurance
Step 1: A GreenTrees verification begins with the measurement of our stands that is in conformance with our field protocol and is robust enough to achieve or exceed a 90/10 confidence interval set by the American Carbon Registry (ACR).
- Over our last 12 verifications, GreenTrees has exceeded this standard each time.
- Our team reviews all the documentation and ownership records of our 600+ landowners and then conducts a Quality Assurance/Quality Control process to ensure.
- After we complete this process, only then, are we ready to begin verification.
Step 2: Verifications begin with the selection of an approved ACR Verifier. These Verifiers hold several accreditations from bodies such as the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO)and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). From the opening meeting to the issued report to ACR it usually takes seven to nine months (and at times up to 14 or more months) to complete successfully. This is due to the time required to go through documents, calculations, and spatial data and apply the relevant standards and methodologies.
With GreenTrees, this entails well over 10,000 documents, several hundred plots, and the ESRI ArcGIS spatial data for all our 600+ landowners.
Step 3: Once the lead verifier completes the report, the Verifier then has another member of the Verification firm perform a peer review assessment of the verification that was conducted. The Verification Report and Statement are co-signed by both the lead Verifier and the Peer Reviewer and the report is then issued to ACR.
Step 4: Once the report goes to ACR, the Registry conducts a final review of the verification. This step takes 1-2 months to complete. Once this fourth and final review is completed, ACR issues the corresponding verified tons to the GreenTrees account.
The bottom line: After these four levels of assurance and audit are performed, then and only then, can GreenTrees transact and move volume to buyers’ accounts or retire on their behalf.
Why it matters: It matters because we want to do our part to create a sustainable future for our kids, grandkids, and beyond. A future that requires us to, as we like to say, Revalue The Earth Because The World Matters. We accomplish this by:
- Reducing emissions to zero and then deploying Negative Emission Technologies (NET), like trees, to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
- Realizing trees are Mother Nature’s technology for removing carbon from the atmosphere.
- Drawing a distinction between what is a Carbon Reduction (i.e. REDD+, IFM, and Renewables) versus a Carbon Removal (i.e. Afforestation/Reforestation).
- Using a sports analogy, REDD+ is playing goal-line defense, IFM is an attacking defense, and Afforestation/Reforestation is pure climate offense. We need a balanced approach!
- Deploying an AND+ mindset - Renewables AND Nature + all the co-benefits to secure our future.
- Understanding that nature operates in a fractal world, not the geometry of straight lines, right angles, and smooth edges of the built environment.
- Accepting that this fractal world of Nature is made up of small holdings of land.
The GreenTrees Story
1996
Environmental Resource Trust (ERT), a spin off of Environmental Defense Fund, is founded as first private carbon registry (eventually Winrock International acquires ERT and rebrands it as American Carbon Registry).
1997
Kellogg Graduate School of Management sponsors Senior-Level Book on Global Climate Change. Chandler co-authored a chapter with Maggie Bryant, Chairperson of National Fish and Wildlife Foundation as well as Environmental Resource Trust. Other authors include Dirk Forrister (Chairman of White House Task Force on Climate Change), Undersecretary Sec. Tim Wirth, BP Chairman John Brown
DOE forms Utilitree Carbon Company with 40 utilities doing carbon reforestation pilots in MS Delta. Subsequently, PowerTree Carbon Company follows.
USDA makes carbon sequestration a purpose to which landowners own the right to the carbon.
2002
We convened a Carbon Reforestation Summit in Mississippi with Utilities, Traders, Landowners, and NGOs.
2003
On St. Patrick’s Day, we formed our company to create a public private partnership between landowners, government, and companies for carbon reforestation.
On Earth Day, Agriculture Secretary Visits MS Delta to talk Hardwood Reforestation and Carbon
