Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS -- (Senate - August 04, 2009)

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By Mrs. SHAHEEN (for herself, Ms. Snowe, Ms. Collins, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Merkley, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Wyden, and Mr. Schumer):

S. 1576. A bill to require the Secretary of Agriculture to establish a carbon incentives program to achieve supplemental greenhouse gas emission reductions on private forest land of the United States, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that will establish a Forest Carbon Incentives Program to help America's family forest owners slow climate change by increasing carbon sequestration and storage on private forestland. This will be critical for our national climate change response, and will create important economic opportunities for landowners across America. I want to thank my colleagues, Senators Snowe, Collins, Sanders, Merkley, Wyden, Leahy and Schumer, with whom I have worked closely to draft this bill. I also want to acknowledge Senator Stabenow, who has long provided leadership on this issue of carbon sequestration.

This legislation is driven by a simple fact: we cannot achieve our greenhouse gas reduction goals without comprehensive and effective utilization of U.S. forests for carbon sequestration. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that U.S. forests currently sequester a remarkable 10 percent of our annual U.S. carbon emissions. Even more remarkably, the EPA estimates that we could double this sequestration capacity to 20 percent of emissions with the right management and conservation.

Unlike some of our emerging energy technologies, forest carbon sequestration is a climate strategy that is ready to go to work right now on meeting our emissions reduction goals. We can immediately put forest owners to work on their lands undertaking activities to help move us to that 20 percent sequestration goal, and create new revenue streams for those small and family landowners to help them navigate through these troubled economic times.

One important pathway to achieve these forest carbon sequestration goals will be through carbon offset markets. For those able to participate, carbon offset programs will provide important financial incentives for projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while, at the same time, helping to keep the costs of a climate program low. The opportunity to earn offset credits will create a financial incentive for large forest landowners to undertake activities that increase carbon sequestration and storage on their lands and that can be measured and verified with the precision necessary to meet rigorous environmental integrity requirements.

However, offset markets will not be easily accessible to the many family forest owners and other smaller landowners who do not have the necessary economies of scale to effectively participate in offset markets. Offset projects come with many upfront and ongoing transactional expenses that will undermine financial gains and constrain the flexibility that family forest owners and other smaller scale landowners will require to participate.

Furthermore, there are some important types of carbon sequestration and storage activities, such as permanent conservation easements, that produce real carbon gains over the long term but are hard to quantify with the precision necessary for offset markets.

We also need to engage the full range of carbon strategies to meet our carbon sequestration goals, even if they cannot conform to the requirements of offsets.

Engaging family forest owners in sequestration is no small piece of the forest carbon equation--America's family forest owners control more than half of all U.S. private forestland, with 119 million acres in ownerships of 100 acres or less. We must create new tools to engage these individuals in efforts to sequester carbon and provide economic opportunities to gain financial incentives for doing that work.

In my home State of New Hampshire, our forests embody this diverse ownership pattern and the unique opportunity to address climate change through forest carbon incentives. New Hampshire is the second most forested state in the nation, and more than 80 percent of that forestland is in private hands. We do have some large private ownerships, including large blocks of working forestland. But most of our privately owned forestland is in small ownerships--averaging 37.5 acres. According to the U.S. Forest Service, 49 percent of New Hampshire's forestland, 2,358,000 acres, is in family ownership, with 124,000 family forest owners in the Granite State.

If these landowners could aggregate their capacity to store carbon on the 2 million acres they own, they could make a significant contribution to needed reductions in the presence of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Each year New Hampshire forests already take up by photosynthesis 25 percent of the total CO2 emitted by the State from man-made sources.

But we can capture even more carbon in our Nation's forests with the right incentives like those in our proposed program. Creating incentives for forest carbon would represent a win-win for New Hampshire and a win-win in every State in the Nation that has privately owned forested landscapes.

Simply, the Forest Carbon Incentives Program will provide financial incentives for small private forest owners to engage in carbon sequestration activities and help our country meet its desired carbon reduction goals. The Forest Carbon Incentives Program will be run through the U.S. Forest Service and State forestry agencies. These experienced forest professionals will work with interested private forest owners to develop a ``climate mitigation contract'' for undertaking forest management activities that will increase carbon absorption and storage. Incentives will be awarded on a straightforward ``practices per acre'' basis, giving landowners a clear and simple agreement and reliable incentive payments. Carbon reductions achieved through these practices are not required to be permanently stored, so landowners will retain more flexibility with future management decisions. This simple and efficient program structure will enable landowners at any scale to participate, especially family forest owners holding smaller parcels that are unlikely to participate in carbon offset markets.

The program will create additional incentive opportunities for interested landowners to protect carbon gains achieved through a climate mitigation contract. Landowners can gain ``bonus'' incentive payments for also undertaking management that addresses pests, fire, and other threats that could damage forests and release the carbon that has been stored there. Landowners can also be paid for a permanent conservation easement that will assure that their lands in the program will never be developed, thereby protecting the carbon in those forests.

This legislation already enjoys support from a broad spectrum of national organizations that care about America's forests, such as the American Forest Foundation, the National Association of State Foresters, The Trust for Public Land, the National Wildlife Federation, and The Nature Conservancy among many others. Of equal importance, it has earned broad support from local, state, and regional interest groups, including the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association, Northland Forest Products, Appalachian Mountain Club, and a host of other leading forest organizations in my home state.

America must use every tool available to address climate change, and should especially favor strategies that are ready to go now and that create new economic opportunities. This legislation will provide both a meaningful climate mitigation strategy and create real jobs in the woods. I encourage my fellow Senators to consider it carefully.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

S. 1576

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