The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation are working together this year promoting special packages of tree and shrub seedlings selected for wildlife habitat improvement.

Different packages are available to enhance the habitat of deer, songbirds, turkey, quail and a variety of other animals. State wildlife and agriculture officials say each wildlife packet is made up of 25 each of four different species of trees and shrubs chosen specifically to improve the wildlife habitat of your property.

“Planting the appropriate trees can be a great way to enhance wildlife habitat on your property,” said Mike Sams, private lands biologist for the ODWC. “Planting a tree today can be a long-term investment for future generations.”

Oklahoma grown seedlings are available to landowners for a broad range of conservation projects. Landowners use the trees for windbreaks to protect crops and livestock, timber production, water quality protection, erosion control or other natural resource projects such as firewood plantings and Christmas tree production.

“Now is the time to begin thinking about planting seedlings and foresters from ODAFF are available to assist you,” according to State Forester John Burwell. “Oklahoma’s seedling planting season runs from December through early April and fall is the best time to prepare the planting site to make the planting job easier.”

New for 2009 is an on-line store where landowners can go to purchase their wildlife habitat improvement packages, as well as choosing from over 35 species of trees and shrubs. Seedlings are one year old, bare-root, and each species packaged in multiples of 50 with a minimum order of 100 trees. They are to be used in rural conservation plantings and cannot be used for ornamental plantings or resold as living trees.

Persons interested in the seedlings are encouraged to visit www.forestry.ok.gov as soon as possible as orders will be filled on a first come, first served basis.

The seedlings will be available for pickup or shipment starting in early January but orders are being taken now via the on-line store or you can request a paper order form by contacting the Forest Regeneration Center at 800-517-FOREST.

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Oct. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --

International Paper (NYSE: IP) today announced plans to close its paper mill and associated operations in Franklin, Va., and its containerboard mills in Pineville, La., and Albany,
Ore. The company also announced it would permanently shut down the previously
idled No. 3 machine at its Valliant, Okla., containerboard mill. The Valliant
Mill's other two machines will continue to operate. These permanent shutdowns
will reduce the company's North American paper and board capacity by 2.1
million tons.

"We recognize these are very difficult decisions affecting our employees,
their families and the communities surrounding these mills," said Chairman and
CEO John Faraci. "We have concluded that we have excess capacity in our North
American paper and packaging businesses, and these decisions will better match
our supply with our expected customer demand."


Since the onset of the global recession, the decline in demand for
International Paper's uncoated freesheet in North America has accelerated, and
consequently the company has decided to further reduce its uncoated freesheet
capacity.


In its containerboard and coated paperboard businesses, International Paper
expects demand to resume growth as the economy rebounds. However, the
company's demand is not expected to return to 2008 levels in the near future.
Therefore, permanent IP capacity closures are necessary.


The closures, which will impact about 1,600 employees, will result in
permanent North American capacity reductions.

Following these permanent shutdowns, International Paper will have
approximately 10 million tons of North American containerboard capacity, 2.6
million tons of North American uncoated freesheet production capacity, and 1.7
million tons of North American coated paperboard capacity. These capacity
shutdowns will not impact the company's ability to serve its customers.


International Paper is committed to helping employees through this transition.
The company will work closely with union officials concerning severance
benefits for hourly employees. Salaried employees impacted by these shutdowns
will be offered severance packages and outplacement assistance consistent with
company policy. Employee assistance providers will be available to support
employee and family needs.


The company estimates that these closures will result in noncash asset
write-off and accelerated depreciation charges of approximately $1.1 billion
and cash severance charges of approximately $60 million to be recorded in the
fourth quarter of 2009 and first quarter of 2010, plus additional closure
costs to be determined and recorded as the facilities are closed.

About International Paper

International Paper (NYSE: IP) is a global paper and packaging company with
manufacturing operations in North America, Europe, Latin America, Russia, Asia
and North Africa. Its businesses include uncoated papers and industrial and
consumer packaging, complemented by xpedx, the company's North American
distribution company. Headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., the company employs
more than 58,000 people in more than 20 countries and serves customers
worldwide. 2008 net sales were approximately $25 billion. For more information
about International Paper, its products and stewardship efforts, visit
www.internationalpaper.com.


This press release may contain forward-looking statements. These statements
reflect management's current views and are subject to risks and uncertainties
that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or
implied in these statements. Factors which could cause actual results to
differ include changes in business conditions which could affect the timing of
the mill closure process. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any
forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future
events or otherwise. Other factors that could cause or contribute to actual
results differing materially from such forward looking statements are
discussed in greater detail in the company's Securities and Exchange
Commission filings.


SOURCE International Paper

SAN FRANCISCO — Woody biomass provides just 0.94 percent of all U.S. energy now, supplying the equivalent of 3.5 million American homes. But Bob Cleaves, president of the Biomass Power Association, a group in Portland, Maine, that represents about 80 plant-burning incinerators in 16 states, says available raw material would allow the industry to double its output. New incinerators are already being planned in many states.

The idea of homegrown, renewable energy, is appealing. It would qualify for tax credits under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and could benefit from support for renewables in the climate bill now going through the Senate.

But many environmentalists are worried. Some, like Chris Matera, founder of Massachusetts Forest Watch, warn that biomass incineration could cause major environmental damage, including the clear cutting of forests and the use of vast quantities of water for cooling. They also say that its combustion emissions are worse than coal’s — a serious charge because in both House and Senate versions of the climate bill, the technology falls into a “biomass loophole.” Categorized as a renewable energy source, biomass would be exonerated from emission caps.

Proponents say that biomass fuel from forests is usually waste wood, the material left over after harvesting for more profitable lumber and paper pulp.

The idea that increased biomass power generation could lead to clear cutting “sounds like hyperventilation to me,” said Ian A. Bowles, secretary of energy and environmental affairs for the state of Massachusetts. “We’re not going to manage our forests to meet biomass power demands.”

“It is absolutely uneconomic to cut a tree down to make biopower,” said Mr. Cleaves of the incinerators’ group.

Biomass plants are typically small, generating less than 50 megawatts, said Jasen Stock, executive director of the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association, because it is not cost effective to drive wood long distances to the plant. “The concern that it’s going to result in a moonscape around that biomass plant is really unfounded,” he said.

But environmental advocates remain skeptical. “The numbers just don’t add up,” said Mary S. Booth, the senior scientist at Massachusetts Environmental Energy Alliance, a group that opposes wood-burning power plants.

For example, a 2008 report for the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation said that four planned biomass incinerators in the state would require an estimated 1.4 million “green,” or undried, tons of biomass a year to fuel 165 megawatts of generation. A partial harvest — not clear-cutting — from forests 70 to 100 years old could net approximately 50 green tons an acre, the report said and it estimated that the haul from public forest lands and willing private landowners could be about one million green tons a year.

Ms. Booth said this plan would almost double the amount of wood harvested in current cutting practices and would expand the area harvested as well. A healthy ecosystem requires some tree waste to decompose into the soil to provide vital nutrients and forage opportunities for insects, birds, and some mammals. She and other environmental advocates question whether this level of extraction is sustainable.

Although timber managers emphasize the use of waste wood, all say that small or crooked trees with little commercial value could be used for biomass. The conditional approval report for a 50-megawatt plant in Russell, Massachusetts, says that operators expect to buy 250,000 to 350,000 green tons a year of “whole tree fuel.”

Some forestry experts say that biomass can be sustainable — if programs are small scale and carefully managed. Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust, a nonprofit organization in California, said it was possible to manage forests sustainably for both the natural ecosystem services they provide — like water storage and cleaning, biodiversity, and habitat — and for such products as timber, paper pulp and biomass.

She said forests need human management at this point because people have already distressed them so much with their activities. “Walking away and pretending that no management is a solution is a recipe for disaster.”

But Mr. Matera, of Massachusetts Forest Watch, says the idea that “‘we have to log the forest for forest health’ is nonsense. The forest doesn’t need us; we need the forest. It’s a sort of anthropocentric worldview to rationalize all this logging.”

Still, enhancing the economic base for forest land helps retain it as forest, said Eric W. Kingsley, vice president of Innovative Natural Resource Solutions, a company that works on forest-based economic development.

“Biomass adds a new potential market to land owners, adding value to timber — and to timber-producing land,” Mr. Kingsley said. “That allows land owners to leave the forest taking up carbon, providing wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities, clean air, clean water; the hundreds of things we rely on forests for.”

In addition to the argument over logging, ecologists worry about water use for cooling. For example, the Russell plant would extract as much as 885,000 gallons, or 3.35 million liters, a day from the nearby Westfield River, of which 85 percent would be lost to evaporation. Such losses are typical of biomass plants, said Margaret E. Sheehan, a lawyer who represents opponents of the Russell plant.

Burning biomass also releases emissions. Like other renewable energy technologies, however, it is widely presumed to be carbon neutral. The carbon absorbed in growing plants is considered to offset the releases.

Still, that equivalence “is purely hypothetical,” said Ms. Booth, the Massachusetts environmental scientist. New trees take time to grow, and scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say time for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is short — perhaps as short as 40 years.

“Our position is that we’re in a climate crisis now,” Ms. Sheehan said. “It only takes a minute to burn a 70-year-old tree, and it takes 70 years to grow it back.”

Moreover, figures derived from government and power plant data show that burning woody biomass releases 1.5 times as much carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour generated as coal, according to the Massachusetts Environmental Energy Alliance.

These emissions would escape regulation under cap proposals in the climate bill. “It’s a critical problem that this area isn’t regulated under the cap,” said Nathanael Greene, director of renewable energy policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “In the long run, as our pressure on fossil fuel emissions gets tighter and tighter, the incentive to shift to the unregulated source of energy, the biomass, will get higher and higher.”

More than a decade ago in the northeast corner of Bolivia, a group of polluters and environmentalists joined forces in the first large-scale experiment to curb climate change with a strategy that promised to suit their competing interests: compensating for greenhouse gas emissions by preserving forests.

The coalition of U.S. utility companies, two nonprofit groups and the Bolivian government had the common goal of making a dent in the worldwide deforestation that accounts for about 17 percent of greenhouse gas emissions each year. The outcome of that experiment is fueling debate over a key element in international climate strategy.

While the Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Project has succeeded in keeping a biologically rich preserve of more than 6,000 square miles free from logging, it has fallen far short of its goal of reducing emissions. The mix of pragmatism and idealism -- providing powerful financial incentives to encourage influential companies and poor countries to work together to slow global warming -- shows the complexity of a much-heralded approach that Democratic lawmakers and international negotiators are trying to write into law.

Preventing the clearing and burning of tropical forests, which help absorb carbon dioxide and provide habitat to an array of species, has become a critical objective for environmentalists.

"It doesn't matter who caused the problem. We are in it together," said Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her work on tree planting in Africa and appealed to President Obama in a meeting last week on the need to preserve forests overseas. "If forests can be kept standing, it would be good for developed nations, it would be good for the developing world."

It also gives the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases more affordable carbon credits under the cap-and-trade system Congress is now debating. Without international offsets, pollution allowances would be 89 percent more expensive under the climate bill authored by Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (Mass.), according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Sixty percent of the international offsets would come from tropical forests, the agency said.

"Including offsets from tropical forests in a climate bill is a key to affordability," said Nigel Purvis, executive director of the bipartisan Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests. "It would be geopolitically and economically foolish for us to push back on that."

But a report Greenpeace will release Thursday questions the premise of using forest conservation overseas to compensate for U.S. pollution, noting that Noel Kempff envisioned keeping 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere over 30 years but has lowered that expectation to 5.8 million. The revised estimates do not take into account that logging may have moved to areas to the north, east and southwest of the project. And the report notes that the project's three corporate underwriters -- American Electric Power, BP America and PacifiCorp -- overestimated how much carbon the project kept from entering the atmosphere, telling the EPA it accounted for 7.4 million metric tons from 1997 to 2004.

"At this crucial time, with the [climate] negotiations in Copenhagen and U.S. legislation, can we afford to take a gamble on what the backers of these programs say haven't been as effective as they anticipated?" said Greenpeace spokesman Daniel Kessler.

American Electric Power chief executive Michael G. Morris said Greenpeace is naive to suggest the world should create a multibillion-dollar fund to preserve forests instead of letting corporations undertake these initiatives to meet their bottom line.

"When Greenpeace says the only reason American Electric Power wants to do this is because it doesn't want to shut down its coal plants, my answer is, 'You bet, because our coal plants serve our customers very cost-effectively,' " he said.

Several forestry experts said the world has learned from the Noel Kempff project and has incorporated lessons from it in the policies that U.S. lawmakers and international negotiators are now shaping. The sharp cut in verified emissions reductions came from satellite technology and better computer models that adjusted the baseline for what would have happened if the project had not been conducted.

Toby Janson Smith, who directs Conservation International's forest carbon markets program, said two new global standards -- one measuring a project's carbon storage and another its social and environmental benefits -- have built "great confidence in the market" in the last couple of years.

And Sarene Marshall, deputy director of the Nature Conservancy's climate team, said any binding climate regime would allow emitters to use verified offsets only after the fact, rather than projected estimates. "We can definitely measure with a high degree of scientific accuracy, and this can be verified by a third party, what would have been the emissions from forests that were targeted for destruction," she said.

The Norwegian government, which has pledged $1 billion between now and 2015 to conserve forests in Brazil, has proposed that any global climate deal inked this year spell out that rich nations pay to protect tropical forests and establish an offset program only once developing countries improve their governance and accounting systems. Audun Rosland, a Norway climate negotiator, said his country wants this stored forest carbon to be on top of what industrialized countries are already doing. "We need both deep cuts in developed countries and developing countries," he said.

Markey, who focused on deforestation during a visit to Brazil last year, included a provision in his and Waxman's bill that sets aside 5 percent of the money from emissions allowances to conserve forests overseas, and the bill states that offsets must come from projects in countries that have a national deforestation plan or are working toward one. The Senate bill includes the same set-aside and slightly different project requirements.

But Kyle L. Davis, PacifiCorp's director of environmental policy and strategy, said the two bills' strict forest requirements might make it impossible for companies like his to find the 2 billion tons of offsets they promise.

And Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), a pivotal vote on climate legislation, said he remains concerned that this sort of system can lead to market speculation. "That's a very complicated area where there's not a lot of experience," Dorgan said.

In the end, according to Center for Clean Air Policy President Ned Helme, both U.S. and international officials need to figure out how to preserve tropical forests as part of any domestic and international climate agreement.

"In terms of selling the deal, this is an important part of the deal, because so many countries benefit," Helme said. "We have to make sure we're not overselling the promise."

For more information go to the Washington Post website by clicking here.

State forester George Geissler in a cross timber forest he is doing a project in near Lake Draper on Wednesday. Photo By David McDaniel, The Oklahoman

Geissler repeatedly explained the estimated 600-acre peninsula in the lake has been prescribed for a controlled burn, as soon as the forest is dry enough and there’s a good northwest wind.

The burn, Geissler said, will get rid of the area’s undergrowth including some small prolific eastern red cedars, but leave native blackjack and post oaks, which the endangered Black-capped Vireo song bird needs to survive.

Such public education is a big part of the job for Geissler and the other 21 state foresters.

"People don’t realize this is a forest, and it really is,” Geissler said.

Oklahoma has 10 million forested acres and some of the most ancient forest types in the U.S., including 200-year-old trees and 13 ecoregions with differing elevations, climate and moisture patterns.

"But still we call this ‘scrub,’” Geissler said, gesturing to the forest nearby.

Early influence

Geissler, 45, has worked 22 years as a forester throughout Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico, Colorado and Idaho, including as a corporate forester for Public Service Co. of Oklahoma, where he, among other things, handled transmission line clearance in the wake of Oklahoma’s ice storms and high winds.
A native of New Orleans, Geissler in the eighth grade decided to pursue forestry, after his family met a forester, and future pen pal and mentor, on vacation in Colorado.

"I thought ‘This guy has the coolest job,’” he said.

Geissler went on to earn a forestry degree at Louisiana State University and then while at PSO, a master’s in business administration from Harvard University.

"There’s a sense of legacy to the field I love,” he said. "I’ll never see the end of the cycle of the trees I plant.”

Changing field

The state’s nursery in Goldsby grows 3 million to 6 million seedlings to plant in acres that have been cut over by lumber companies or in pastures landowners want to convert back to forests for wildlife.

Craig McKinley, a forestry professor at Oklahoma State University, said the field has changed markedly since he graduated from OSU in 1968.

Then, it was mostly about basic timber management and how to ecologically treat forests, he said. Now, it’s evolved into a business, including conservation, engineering, accounting and legal aspects.

"What I love about it is I learn something new every day,” said McKinley, who spends most of his time educating private landowners about timber production, wildlife, replanting and carbon sequestration in and around Talihina.

He’s looking at the global climate change and the number of trees that need to be planted.

He’s also working with forest landowners who, at about $10 per acre per year, are selling carbon credits for the carbon their trees are naturally storing to manufacturers who are producing too much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions.

"They’re buying today, so if President (Barack) Obama’s law comes in, they can sell at a higher price,” McKinley said.

Conservation and forestry groups that have been hoping to plant roots in the Senate climate bill are divided over whether the proposal introduced this week will advance opportunities for tree farmers and forest managers to profit from carbon sequestration.

The bill that Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) unveiled this week provides significant opportunities for domestic offsets from carbon-storing conservation projects, but the extent to which forests and forest products would participate is not entirely clear.

Forest conservation advocates have been pressing the Senate to include robust incentives to help store carbon and stem the loss of domestic forests, and the groups applauded the senators for including forestry as one option in its expanded offsets program.

But at least one forestry industry group is questioning whether the language of the proposed bill would definitely open the door for their participation.

"I think you have to take legislation on its face and not presume too much, and if you take this on its face, it falls short," said David Tenny, president of the National Alliance of Forest Owners.

Like the cap-and-trade bill the House approved this past summer, the Kerry-Boxer proposal allows regulated industries that cannot meet greenhouse gas reductions at the smokestack to buy offset credits by investing in green energy or greenhouse gas reduction projects. The provision could significantly reduce compliance costs for some industries.

The total number of allowed offsets, which would pay for things like mass tree plantings, is 2 billion tons yearly, the same as the House. But the Senate proposal shifts more of those offsets to domestic projects. It would allow international offsets to account for a quarter of projects annually rather than the half called for in the House bill.

All of this is good news to U.S. forestry groups and land trusts, which want a robust domestic offset program to help curb the more than 2.2 million acres of forest, farm and ranchland that the United States loses each year. The Agriculture Department has predicted the country could lose up to 75 million acres of forests in the next 50 years.

"I think we're seeing a good evolution with regard to how the Senate sees the role of land in addressing climate change, particularly the role they see for land in the United States," said Laurie Wayburn, president of the California-based Pacific Forest Trust. "And I think we're seeing a very good development in the recognition that we need to address emissions from domestic deforestation and land conservation and we can make significant credible gains from stewardship and forests."

The question is whether the language in the bill is specific enough to ensure forestry's participation.

The Kerry-Boxer bill tasks the administration with developing a list of projects that should be used for offsets. The legislation includes a list of projects that should be given "priority consideration" -- including reforestation, forest management projects and harvested wood products.

The priority list includes all the forestry practices that tree farmers have pushed for. The concern for Tenny's forestry industry group is that it does not mandate that forestry projects be on the offset list. Rather, the bill gives the administration ultimate discretion to choose the list of eligible projects, even if it asks them to make forestry and other practices a priority.

Other groups, like the Pacific Forest Trust and the Trust for Public Land, were less concerned and applauded Kerry and Boxer for their consideration of forestry, even if they would have preferred to see "shall" or "must" language.

"I can see why just having the words there would make some people feel encouraged ... but the language does not have a great deal of significance because of what happens thereafter, the whole process begins from a blank slate," Tenny said. "If you look at it at this point, they are just words."

Compromises

The compromise agreement that Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) brokered in the House was slightly more direct. It said the permissible offsets "shall" include practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester greenhouse gases, starting with a list included in the bill.

The concern for Tenny's group highlights the minefield the 821-page bill poses for lawmakers who want to please a variety of interests, each of which may have very specific concerns about relatively small provisions in the bill that could alter their industry.

For instance, many forest and agriculture groups would also like the bill to tighten some deadlines for setting up the offsets program and see a bigger, more defined role for the Agriculture Department, which has a history of working with landowners on conservation projects.

The new Senate text gives the president jurisdiction over the potential program, rather than defining clear roles for USDA and U.S. EPA.

Farm and forestry groups are making their case to Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and other members of her panel as she considers a markup to weigh in on the agriculture and forestry portions of the bill. The agriculture and forestry language currently in the Kerry-Boxer bill could serve as a placeholder until lawmakers with a more vested interest in the industries have a chance to weigh in on the bill -- much as Peterson did in the House.

"The new Senate proposal is a significant step forward; there are some additional improvements that could be made ... but the Senate has a lot of smart people on these issues who can contribute a lot to advancing it forward," said Jad Daley, director of the climate conservation program for the Trust for Public Land. "It does feel like a great start.

In addition to Lincoln, groups are looking to Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who has been working on her own agriculture package that could be appended to the bill in committee or on the Senate floor, should the climate bill come up for a vote.

And Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) have introduced their own placemarker bill -- widely supported by forestry and conservation groups -- that would expand on incentives for small forest landowners in the climate bill.

“Firewood is becoming a major pathway for moving invasive pest, and that’s not a good thing,” says John Burwell, Oklahoma State Forester. “The take home message to Oklahomans is to buy their firewood locally and burn it locally.”

Whether it is used at a campground or at home, people are transporting firewood great distances these days, taking with them any bugs or diseases that might not be native to that area.

“Places that have non-native insect and disease problems like sudden oak death, emerald ash borer, or Asian longhorned beetle, have lots of dying trees,” says Burwell. “People are cutting those trees for firewood and moving it. The pests are showing up hundreds of miles from any local infestation as people take the wood with them or sell it far from the source.”

The concern over firewood is stronger this year, largely because of emerald ash borer spread. The exotic wood-boring pest originally came from Asia and is believed to have entered the U.S. for the first time in the 1990s.  It has caused extensive damage and has killed millions of ash trees in Michigan and parts of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Ontario, Canada. The insect has also been unintentionally transported to at least 8 other states and has appeared as close to Oklahoma as southwestern Missouri.

“Firewood has come from as far away at both the East and West Coasts when people move to Oklahoma and have the movers transport everything in their possession- including the firewood,” says Burwell.

Firewood regulations are being discussed on a national level and if regulators can find an effective way to enforce them, those regulations could be adopted. But perhaps the best method of dealing with the issue continues to be public outreach and education.

As a consumer, the best advice is to ask the seller where the firewood came from. If the seller can’t assure you the wood is local, buy it from someone who can. Packaged firewood sold at retail stores often have a label indicating the origin of the product and whether it is kiln-dried. Consumers should check those labels carefully.

 “We’d like for everyone to become aware that firewood is a pathway for moving potentially damaging pests,” says Burwell.  “It is easy to fix - just buy local.  There is plenty of it around and you will not only be protecting the forest but supporting Oklahoma’s economy as well.”

The Oklahoma Green Schools Program committee was assembled in late 2008 to coordinate the environment and energy resources from state governmental agencies and private industry to benefit the Oklahoma schools.

Committee members are from organizations such as the U.S. Green Building Council Oklahoma Chapter, Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, Oklahoma Department of Education, Oklahoma Department of Commerce and the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, among others. Their objective is to bring coordination and focus to the green school movement in Oklahoma, by laying out a plan to help administrators, teachers and students to improve their schools and their environment.

There are three tracks to the Oklahoma Green Schools Program. Track One is Educational Investigation, which includes free environmental education training and materials, assistance with service learning projects, and opportunities for low-level funding of green projects.

Track Two, Building Upgrades, focuses primarily on funding for major energy retrofits in school buildings.

Track Three, LEED for Schools, is for new schools or schools undergoing major renovation that are interested in achieving LEED certification. Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED for Schools provides a comprehensive tool for school districts that wish to build green with measurable results. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification provides parents, teachers and the community with a report card for their school building, verifying that the school has been built or modified to meet high levels of performance.

The Oklahoma Green Schools Pilot Program kicked off recently at Keystone Adventure School & Farm in Edmond, which serves children from pre-kindergarten through sixth grade.
Requirements for Track One Pilot Schools include:

• Register as a Green School on the Project Learning Tree Web site.
• Designate a Green Team whose members will attend an on-site Green School Workshop in September.
• Host a free environmental education/training workshop open to school staff and faculty.
• Involve students in Project Learning Tree school investigations for at least three categories (energy, water, waste, environmental quality, or school site investigation) to determine where changes could be made to save both resources and money for your particular school.
• Present a student-designed report of findings and recommendations for green retrofits to school decision-makers.
• Develop and implement at least one service-learning action project from information provided by the student report.
• Mentor other schools in your district or region starting in the 2010-2011 school year.
Assistance is provided by the committee for Track One Pilot Schools in areas such as collecting feedback, conducting on-site Green Schools Training, and aiding in service-learning project planning.

Greening the back-to-school experience for students is a great way to improve the school environment and encourages students to live a sustainable lifestyle. Our next generations will determine the future, so it seems reasonable to teach them to make it a green one.

For more information about the Oklahoma Green School Program, visit their Web site at www.okgreenschools.org.

With the development of climate legislation proceeding in the U.S. Senate, a key question is whether the United States can cost-effectively reduce a significant share of its contributions to increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations through forest-based carbon sequestration. Should biological carbon sequestration be part of the domestic portfolio of compliance activities?

The potential costs of carbon sequestration policies should be one major criterion, and so it can be helpful to assess the cost of supplying forest-based carbon sequestration. This is a topic which I’ve investigated in a series of papers with various co-authors over the past ten years (“Land-Use Change and Carbon Sinks: Econometric Estimation of the Carbon Sequestration Supply Function.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 51(2006): 135-152, with Ruben Lubowski and Andrew Plantinga; “Climate Change and Forest Sinks: Factors Affecting the Costs of Carbon Sequestration.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 40(2000):211-235, with Richard Newell; and “The Costs of Carbon Sequestration: A Revealed-Preference Approach.” American Economic Review, volume 89, number 4, September 1999, pp. 994-1009.) Most useful for policy purposes is probably the 2005 report Kenneth Richards and I wrote for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change (“The Cost of U.S. Forest-Based Carbon Sequestration”). In that report, we surveyed and synthesized the best cost estimates from all available sources.

Human activities — particularly the extraction and burning of fossil fuels and the depletion of forests — are causing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to rise. It may be possible to increase the rate at which ecosystems remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store the carbon in plant material, decomposing detritus, and organic soil. In essence, forests and other highly productive ecosystems can become biological scrubbers by removing (sequestering) CO2 from the atmosphere. Much of the current interest in carbon sequestration has been prompted by suggestions that sufficient lands are available to use sequestration for mitigating significant shares of annual CO2 emissions, and related claims that this approach provides a relatively inexpensive means of addressing climate change. In other words, the fact that policy makers are giving serious attention to carbon sequestration can partly be explained by (implicit) assertions about its marginal cost, or (in economists’ parlance) its supply function, relative to other mitigation options.

Among the key factors that affect estimates of the cost of forest carbon sequestration are: (1) the tree species involved, forestry practices utilized, and related rates of carbon uptake over time; (2) the opportunity cost of the land-that is, the value of the affected land for alternative uses; (3) the disposition of biomass through burning, harvesting, and forest product sinks; (4) anticipated changes in forest and agricultural product prices; (5) the analytical methods used to account for carbon flows over time; (6) the discount rate employed in the analysis; and (7) the policy instruments used to achieve a given carbon sequestration target.

Given the diverse set of factors that affect the cost and quantity of potential forest carbon sequestration in the United States, it should not be surprising that cost studies have produced a broad range of estimates. Ken Richards and I identified eleven previous analyses that were good candidates for comparison and synthesis, and we made their results mutually consistent by adjusting them for constant-year dollars, use of equivalent annual costs as outcome measures, identical discount rates, and identical geographic scope. We also employed econometric methods to estimate the central tendency (or “best-fit”) of the normalized marginal cost functions from the eleven studies as a rough guide for policy makers of the projected availability of carbon sequestration at various costs.

Three major conclusions emerged from our survey and synthesis. First, there is a broad range of possible forest-based carbon sequestration opportunities available at various magnitudes and associated costs. The range depends upon underlying biological and economic assumptions, as well as analytical cost-estimation methods employed.

Second, a systematic comparison of sequestration supply estimates from national studies produces a range of $25 to $75 per ton for a program size of 300 million tons of annual carbon sequestration. The range increases somewhat- to $30-$90 per ton of carbon-for programs sequestering 500 million tons annually.

Third, when a transparent and accessible econometric technique was employed to estimate the central tendency (or “best-fit”) of costs estimated in the studies, the resulting supply function for forest-based carbon sequestration in the United States is approximately linear up to 500 million tons of carbon per year, at which point marginal costs reach approximately $70 per ton.

A 500 million ton per year sequestration program would be very significant, offsetting approximately one-third of annual U.S. carbon emissions. At this level, the estimated costs of carbon sequestration are comparable to typical estimates of the costs of emissions abatement through fuel switching and energy efficiency improvements. This result indicates that sequestration opportunities ought to be included in the economic modeling of climate policies. And it further suggest that if it is possible to design and implement a domestic carbon sequestration program, then such a program ought to be included in a cost-effective portfolio of compliance strategies when the United States enacts a mandatory domestic greenhouse gas reduction program. Large-scale forest-based carbon sequestration can be a cost-effective tool that should be considered seriously by policy makers.

Of course, this raises the question of whether a policy that will bring about such biological carbon sequestration cost-effectively can be developed, whether as part of a cap-and-trade system, a related offset scheme, or through some other policy mechanism. That is a question without easy answers (as I’ve noted in a previous post on the Waxman-Markey legislation), but the cost analyses I’ve reviewed in this post suggest that it is important to explore possible ways of incorporating biological carbon sequestration in future U.S. climate policy.

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/analysis/stavins/?cat=112