L.A. Firm Helps Utility With Innovative Plan : Environment: The idea is to lower carbon dioxide levels in another area of the world as an offset to pollution closer to home.
A New England utility and a Malaysian logging firm have embarked on a venture to reduce carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, not by planting more rain forest trees, but by cutting them down more efficiently.
The three-year pilot project, announced Monday by New England Electric System Cos. and Innoprise Corp., a major Malaysian forest products company--and brokered through a small Los Angeles firm--could help change the destructive economics of Third World rain forests.
The goal is to harvest the forest’s commercial timber in ways that save more surrounding trees, use fewer logging roads, improve water quality in forest streams, reduce erosion--and as a boon for Third World economies, improve the yield of rain forest timber.
The utility, dependent on fossil fuels, stands to benefit down the road if carbon dioxide emissions become regulated, as many expect will happen.
The logging company can continue to cut trees at its current harvest rate while improving the productivity and environmental health of its forest.
Environmentalists will be following the project closely since some have questioned the ability of a U.S. utility to enforce such agreements overseas. The project will be monitored by the Rain Forest Alliance, a New York-based international environmental group that supports the concept.
By reducing the number of surrounding trees destroyed during harvesting, the project would slow the release of carbon dioxide from decomposing trees left lying in the forest. Technically advanced harvest techniques would enhance regrowth, increasing the ability of the forest to absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis.
That increased absorption would help to offset carbon dioxide emissions from utilities while allowing Third World loggers to improve tree harvest in an environmentally sound and sustainable way. If successful, the techniques--termed “reduced-impact logging”--could be applied to tropical hardwood rain forests in the Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea and other developing nations.
“We will attempt to reduce by as much as 50% the impact of current logging practices” on the forest, Cyril Pinso, Innoprise’s general manager of forestry, said in Los Angeles on Friday.
“This is the first time these techniques have been brought together, in what we hope will become a new standard,” says Don Justin Jones, managing director of COPEC, a new firm in downtown Los Angeles that brokered the deal.
Jones was beginning to form his business last fall when he heard of New England Electric’s interest in testing carbon dioxide offset schemes. Jones says he is currently talking to other big fossil-fuel burning U.S. companies and Third World landholders.
“We’re not in business to do just one deal,” Jones says.
Over the life of the Malaysian project, the foresters hope to remove from the world’s shared atmosphere 300,000 to 600,000 tons of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, considered the major villain in scenarios of global warming, is released in the burning of fossil fuel--still the mainstay of U.S. electricity generation.
Innoprise, which controls 2.5 million acres of the largest remaining contiguous lowland Asian rain forest, already practices selective cutting--as opposed to controversial clear-cutting--at a conservative rate compared to that of other rain-forest loggers. It has also entered into other environmentally beneficial agreements, including a project with a Dutch government utility to rehabilitate and replant 60,000 acres of logged forest.
Most of Innoprise’s harvest consists of tropical hardwood known in the United States as Philippine mahogany, or lauan.
The Malaysia project is a voluntary undertaking by New England Electric. Carbon dioxide emissions are not controlled by law.
But New England Electric, Southern California Edison Co. and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power are among companies pledging to lower carbon dioxide emissions, and many environmentalists and utility executives predict mandatory requirements in the future.
Under such laws, companies’ voluntary offsets may be grandfathered into the regulatory system. A provision in the House version of current energy legislation would create a voluntary national carbon dioxide registry, in which a company could get credit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.
If a market in these credits develops--similar to the EPA’s existing market in acid-rain-forming sulfur dioxide--the company could be a leg up with credits for early investments.
But what spurred New England Electric into action was a proposal in the Massachusetts Legislature to put a so-called carbon tax of $22 a ton on carbon dioxide emissions in the state. The European Community has proposed a similar measure.
“That’s a lot of money, more than the cost of the fossil fuel itself,” says Peter Calvert, in charge of the project for New England Electric.
In contrast, it could cost New England Electric less than $2 a ton to offset a ton of emissions with improved logging in Malaysia, according to some experts.
The value of such international pollution-offset schemes has been debated by environmentalists and economists. Many question the ability of a U.S. utility to enforce a long-term agreement outside U.S. jurisdiction. Others are concerned that utilities might reap benefits in the United States for supporting risky overseas deals even after they collapse.
“We are not opposed theoretically to doing deals overseas--in fact, we are very supportive,” says Alice Leblanc, a staff economist with the Environmental Defense Fund.
“But there are definitely risks,” Leblanc says. “Deals like this will help iron out some of the problems.”
Which is partly why New England Electric chose to work with Innoprise.
“They have conservation areas that have attracted scientific participation--foresters from literally all over the world come there to do research . . . so there is a great deal of data,” says Calvert.
In the deal announced Monday, New England Electric will contribute about $450,000 and arrange for technical exchanges with forestry experts from Sweden, Australia and elsewhere.
Innoprise will provide forest personnel, facilities and training programs.
The idea of offsets has had one previous test, with mixed results.
In 1989, Applied Energy Services, an Arlington, Va.-based utility, paid $2 million to help CARE, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Peace Corps plant 52 million trees in Guatemala--to offset emissions from a new coal-burning plant in Connecticut.
While CARE officials think that the project is generally on track, the tree planting has not gone as fast as many had hoped. The utility company has apparently expressed concern, while technicians in the field have reminded it that such rural-improvement projects are more than a simple matter of planting trees.
“It’s a matter of educating the utility company to the farmers’ needs, as well as educating the farmers,” says Kim Johnston, CARE deputy manager for Latin America.
Better Logging, Better Air A unique pilot project between the New England Electric System Co. and a Malaysian forest products company will try to counter the so-called greenhouse effect. The project hopes toincrease carbon dioxide absorption in a tropical hardwood forest to help offset CO2 emissions from the utilities. It will also allow Third World loggers to improve tree harvest in an environmentally sound and sustainable way. If successful, the techniques-termed reduced impact logging-could be applied in many parts of the world. Improved logging techniques will slow the release of carbon dioxide from decomposing non-commerical trees left lying in the forest and enhance regrowth-all of which increases the ability of trees to absorb CO2 during photosynthesis. In this first experiment, foresters hope to remove 300,000 to 600,000 tons of CO2 over the three years of the experiment. New England’s Electric’s fossil-fuel burning electric power sources annually emit 15 million tons of carbon dioxide, a gas blamed for global warming. Directional felling: Trees are brought down so accurately that they destroy only a small amount of surrounding forest. Vine cutting: Vines, which can bring down surrounding trees, are trimmed before logging. Improved planning to reduce the number of roads and staging areas. Better preservation of forest water quality by lowering harvest damage around streams and reducing erosion. Innopise Corp., a forest products company in Sabah, Malaysia, currently destroys about 50% of the forest to harvest 10% of the trees. With new techniques, they hope to lower the destruction by 20% to 50%
