Florida’s Governor and elected officials have declared their commitment to reducing the state’s greenhouse gas footprint by a substantial amount, while increasing the amount of energy produced from renewable resources.
Florida’s forests, which provide the backbone for the region’s rural economy and dominate North Florida’s landscape, have been earmarked by Governor Charlie Crist for a key role in meeting these goals. At the heart of Florida’s climate change program is the intention to give forest landowners an incentive to store and sequester more carbon in order to reduce overall carbon emissions.
Florida has over 15 million acres of forests – that’s almost half the entire state – and 19 of Florida’s 67 counties, all of them in North Florida, are more than 75 percent covered by forests. Significant amounts of carbon are already stored in the forests, and this could increase with reforestation efforts. Also, wood and other biomass from Florida’s forests already provide renewable energy, and with good forest management they could provide even more.
With regard to climate change, the Governor has set a target to reduce Florida’s greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Both presidential candidates from the Republican and Democrat parties have publicly supported similar reductions through implementation of a cap-and-trade program for carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions.
In terms of generating renewable energy, recent comprehensive energy and climate change legislation signed by Governor Crist in June directs the Florida Public Service Commission to prepare a proposed Renewable Portfolio Standard for the Legislature’s review next session. It is likely to stipulate that a greater percentage of energy be generated from renewable sources. For example, Green Circle Bio Energy’s facility in Cottondale is producing hundreds of thousands of tons of wood pellets for use in power plants.
Florida’s state conservation agencies are increasingly looking to preserve “working agricultural lands” — including working forests — via the voluntary purchase of development rights from landowners. The concept is that such lands will be protected from future development, while benefiting the economy and environment by providing carbon sequestration and renewable energy.
Recent state legislation has extended the “Florida Forever” conservation land programme for a further 10 years. The legislation also provides a dedicated funding stream for the Florida Department of Agriculture’s innovative Rural and Family Lands Protection Program. This protects local rural economies by keeping working forests in production.
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Carbon Emissions/Credits
EU farmers may be keen to follow the US lead to try to earn money from carbon credits after 2012.
This could prompt the EU to ease its cautious stance on accounting for emissions from land use soon after a new global climate pact is struck.
A provision enabling emitters to use domestic offsets from the forestry sector was included in a bill passed by the US House of Representatives in June and is likely to figure strongly in the Senate’s plans expected later this month.
But current EU climate policy does not allow farmers to earn credits from cutting emissions.
The more proactive US attitude to allowing land-use reductions to generate carbon credits makes it more likely the EU will move in the same direction, according to Matthieu Wemaere, a researcher at France’s Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (Iddri).
“The door is open for discussion on this…a number of member states were certainly concerned that land-use provisions were left out of the EU’s climate package last year,” Wemaere added.
Further pressure could come from the commission-led aim to link the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) with that of the US and other cap-and-trade systems as early as 2015.
“The commission is aware that if it wants to link the ETS they will have to sift out (land use) from the US system,” said Michela Beltracchi, EU policy director for the International Emissions Trading Assocication (Ieta), a carbon trading lobby group.
Banning offset credits generated from land use and agriculture may prove difficult.
“Even if they devise a way of filtering them out, the credits will indirectly find a way into the EU system,” Beltracchi added.
The commission’s environment department has been reluctant to accept carbon credits from projects in forests or agricultural land mainly because of difficulties in effectively monitoring the amount of carbon dioxide stored.
The executive also has fears of diluting its carbon market with a flood of cheap credits generated from these potentially huge sectors.
Last October it recommended credits generated from land use and forestry should only be used after 2020, and only then if a pilot scheme was found to be robust enough.
The European parliament originally wanted to allow a limited amount into the EU ETS from 2013 but eleventh hour negotiations removed the proposals as part of the EU’s climate and energy package completed last December.
EU leaders agreed to cut the bloc’s emissions 20 per cent under 1990 levels by 2020 but rules on how to account for land use will only be finalised after international procedures are firmed.
These are expected to be agreed upon as part of the UN-led process to negotiate a post-2012 global climate deal to succeed the Kyoto protocol.
The commission has been tasked with producing a report about how it will treat emissions from the land-use sector.