Tag Archives: forest
Sustainable Forest Innovations Revitalize Hard Hit Communities
By Charlie Spies, CEO CEI Capital Management LLC From Maine to Georgia to Arizona to Oregon, new forest-based enterprises are coming on line with financial support from New Markets Tax Credits every day. These tax credits provide incentives for private investors to fund projects that create or preserve jobs and diversify economies in distressed communities. The result is re-invention and job creation within the supply chain of an age-old industry: growing new forests, sustainably harvesting and moving the timber, and then processing it in 21 st century ways by breaking down the trees into fiber and even into molecules with a variety of potential uses. For instance, this month in rural Berlin, NH the first delivery of sustainably harvested wood to the Burgess Biomass Plant marked a milestone in the evolution of the region’s forest-based economy. On track to come online by the end of the year, it is a prime example of next generation forest utilization as an economic engine. The plant is built on the site of a defunct paper mill, where it will produce 75 megawatts of power, sustain 40 jobs in management and plant operations, plus spur hundreds more jobs in the woods associated with harvesting and transporting biomass. The project received $64 million in New Markets Tax Credits, which attracted private investors to participate. Congress first established New Markets Tax Credits in 2000 to stimulate investment and economic growth in low-income and underserved rural and urban communities that are often overlooked by conventional capital markets. Investors receive 39 percent federal tax credit over seven years as incentive to finance businesses and economic development projects in these distressed communities. The New Markets Tax Credits program has been the impetus for projects on the cutting edge in the forest product industry over the last decade. The program has allowed for millions of acres of timberlands to be managed as sustainable forests available for both industrial and recreational use, as well as creating jobs through continued innovation in the use of forest products from high speed lumber manufacturing, to composite material manufacturing, to cellulosic fuel. These targeted private capital investments are helping to reinvent local economies and protect their future viability using environmentally sustainable practices. New Markets Tax Credits helped Westervelt Company to fund a new wood pellet manufacturing plant in rural Alabama, where nearly half the population lives in poverty and unemployment is greater than ten percent. The plant will produce 280,000 metric tons of wood pellets for use as an alternative fuel source around the world. This project has so far created 45 permanent jobs while assuring demand for locally produced timber and the people that harvest and transport that wood. Alternatively, the Appalachian Mountain Club’s (AMC) Maine Woods Initiative uniquely combines recreation, natural resource protection, sustainable forestry, and community partnerships. By encouraging nature-based tourism, the project is creating jobs: logging crews are busy at work supplying local paper mills while three traditional sporting camps are staffed to welcome visitors, and professionals are employed to manage nearly 70,000 acres of timberland, not to mention the ripple effect in the local economy. The AMC’s purchase of this working forest for conservation and continued public use for both forestry and recreation was supported through New Markets Tax Credits valued at approximately $16.5 million. Further, with cutting edge research and development at the molecular level, ZeaChem Applied Technology in Oregon is using its “know how” to produce fuel and other valuable chemicals from low value wood. The work was made possible with New Markets Tax Credits, employing chemical engineers and researchers while developing green energy. If you believe your project is a candidate for New Markets Tax Credits, your best first step is to speak with a professional who understands the program and can help you understand how you need to structure the financing, corporate ownership and other considerations necessary to qualify. There are a variety of banks that are experienced in this sort of community development, as well as the qualified Community Development Entities (CDE’s) like CEI Capital Management, who administer the program. Charlie Spies is CEO of CEI Capital Management which creates and preserves jobs and improves quality of life in rural, low income communities by providing access to project capital through New Markets Tax Credits. Over 10 years CEI Capital Management has placed more than $658.8 million in 74 different projects across the U.S. In addition to fiscal soundness, CEI Capital Management evaluates each project according to its benefit to the local community, economic gain and positive impact on the environment. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of CEI, the Maine-based nonprofit community development financial institution which was among the founders of this important federal economic development program. For more information, visit http://www.ceimaine.org/CCML Continue reading
Forest Real Estate – Dubai Marina Office
Creating a unique name in UAE’s real estate industry by building awareness about eco-living for a better world, Forest Real Estate is your best choice where … Continue reading
Trees The Answer To Carbon Capture
By Ross Hampton – posted Wednesday, 24 July 2013 When the Government recently announced the switch from carbon tax to carbon trading, it also quietly deferred $200 million which was supposed to help industry develop ‘carbon capture and storage’ technology. There has been little outcry because, by all accounts, innovations in this area are coming at a slow pace. Coincidentally $200 million is exactly the figure which the forest industry has put before government for an alternate ‘carbon capture and storage’ scheme which is not only a sure bet but, ‘shovel ready’. I am talking about trees. Consider this. Trees ‘capture’ carbon as they grow. When they are harvested for products, like furniture and house frames, they continue to ‘store’ the carbon for many decades. Following harvest, the forest regenerates (or plantations are replanted), with the new trees ‘capturing’ even more carbon from the atmosphere for storage in yet more products. It is the most perfectly virtuous of carbon cycles. The scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who set the international carbon accounting rules, have long been unequivocally in favour of the ‘harvest and regrow’ scenario. In 2007 they pronounced, “In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustainable yield of timber, fibre, or energy from the forest will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefits.” At home, our scientists have replicated international studies. They have proven that a well-managed, production forest is up to 240 per cent better at storing carbon over the long term than if the same area is locked away. So why haven’t state and federal government programs turbo-charged best practice forestry as a given for a carbon constrained economy?The answer is as simple as it is challenging – trees take time. Trees are a long term investment with long term benefits. However, in Australia, much about climate change programs has been geared to the short term as we have focused on quick wins. The big winners have been the ‘off the shelf’ solutions, which, courtesy taxpayer subsidies, deliver a compelling and fast ‘return on investment’ for company accountants. The most striking example is the exponential growth of wind turbines. Thousands now dot our landscapes and, according to energy forecasts, they will soon be joined by tens of thousands more as we relentlessly track towards our bipartisan ‘20 per cent renewable energy by 2020’ target. Expect to hear and see many more protests as that happens. Industrial scale wind farms have some strident critics who point to their impact on the landscape, health and communities. But there is a very large irony here if you stop to think about it.By attempting to address an uncoated ‘externality’ in carbon emissions we are, with wind installations, arguably creating a raft of other negative externalities. If we turned to trees to help solve our carbon conundrum, the externalities would all be positive. They include erosion and salinity prevention, biodiversity, picnic areas, walking tracks, not to mention jobs and growth for our regions. In Europe these ‘value adds’ are often captured under the umbrella of ‘eco-system services’. Governments are now turning attention to developing the methodologies to appropriately ‘price’ them. It is a belated recognition that trees really do deliver the ‘resource par excellence’ for a more enlightened twenty first century of development. Back home, trees also give Australian policy makers the opportunity to turn the policy dial to these longer term, and net positive, settings. All it takes is an agreement to bring forward payment to the time of planting for the carbon stocks which will accumulate in the trees. In effect the Government would be hedging a future, and growing, market. This is a vital change to counteract the main disincentive to investment in new tree planting – the long wait for a return on high establishment costs. It would be a win-win for government and forest communities. The government would ‘bank’ the carbon credits to sell in carbon markets. The trees, harvested and re-planted in rotation, would sustain the forest industry into the future. Based on modest carbon price estimates, an initial investment of $200 million per year, over the first three years, would eventually become cost neutral, even paying back the ‘seeding’ funds. And that result doesn’t even start to calculate the additional carbon which we would be putting in the bank in terms of the timber products made from trees. Or the massive energy benefits available if we were to use the forest process residues (smaller branches and mill off-cuts) to fire up generators replacing other less environmentally friendly power. At present Australia’s plantations provide a carbon emissions offset of 4 per cent against our national carbon emissions target. This policy would allow this to surge to 10 per cent by 2050. Great for our carbon constrained future economy and great for our forestry communities. Continue reading
