Is it possible to buy land, plant trees and sell carbon credits?

Question

The whole carbon trading scheme is a bit confusing to me. What is it worth? How do you calculate the offsets etc.. I am from Australia if this helps. Thanks in advance for you answers.

Answer 1

What you're talking about is terrestrial sequestration. You can get carbon credits for it, but they would be very small and you would have to through a certification process.

Answer 2

It will work if you find someone stupid enough to buy green credits. There is a sucker born every minute or so the saying goes.

Answer 3

Hmm you just gave me an idea..simce it's an unregulated industry...I could that since I own some land.

It will be like the old days of selling the brooklyn bridge to some idiot.

Answer 4

Here is a link to a list of companies making money off global warming from the  treehugger.com

http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/carbon_o...

That might help.

Apparently all that is required is that you claim to use money invested, over your operating cost, to offset carbon emissions.  Your operating costs can be set to any level you want.  How you offset carbon is also up to you.  Pretty handy really.  Any professional advertising company should be able to set up a company for you.

In fact, you do not even have to buy the land, saying you will buy the land with invested money (above operating costs) will do the job.

Answer 5

You're not going to get any official accreditation for your carbon credits unless you have a lot of financle resources or you allie yourself with some organisation with the necessary connections.

In Australia, the Clean Energy Council is one of the major players.  Companies pay $25000 each to get a vote on the council.  Lets not be naive about what the money is for. It's not for tea and cakes at the meetings, it get's accumulated into a fund and gets donated to politicians in exchange for favourable policy.  

In the green industry, if you want to be a player, you need to pay the piper.

That's not to say you can't do it.  A lot of people and companies have made fortunes by becoming members of Green Star.

Growing trees and burying them underground makes about as much sense as anything in terms of reducing CO2 and in the future, some enerprising Australians might form an umbrella group to accredit farmers to sequest cabon underground on their own properties, but this group will have to make donations to the relevant politicians so the government will back them.

Answer 6

Save your money, carbon credits is BULL!  But you're right the whole thing is a scheme, a scam, a big fat ripoff.  All the carbon credit c**p is snake oil that goes to Al Gore and his pals.  It is not regluated and is not supervised.