United States

Department of 

Agriculture

Forest Service

Southern

Research Station

General Technical 

Report SRS–107

A Description and Comparison 

of Selected Forest Carbon 

Registries: A Guide for States 

Considering the Development 

of a Forest Carbon Registry

Jessica Call and Jennifer Hayes
The Authors:

Jessica Call, Policy Analyst, U.S. Department of Agriculture 

Forest Service, Washington, DC; Jennifer Hayes, 

Management & Program Analyst, U.S. Department of 

Agriculture Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, 

Fort Collins, CO.

October 2007

Southern Research Station

200 W.T. Weaver Blvd.

Asheville, NC 28804
A Description and Comparison of

Selected Forest Carbon Registries: A Guide

for States Considering the Development of a Forest Carbon 

Registry

Jessica Call and Jennifer Hayes
ii
iii

Contents

Introduction................................................................................................................................................................................... 1

Background Concepts in Carbon Emissions and Sequestration .............................................................................................. 1

Why a Registry?............................................................................................................................................................................ 2

Major Registry Areas.................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Legal basis and registry purpose................................................................................................................................................ 2

Definition of reporting entity ..................................................................................................................................................... 3

Entity vs. Project Reporting......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Ownership.................................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Liability...................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Quantification of Carbon .......................................................................................................................................................... 4

Measurement Methodology.......................................................................................................................................................... 5

Direct vs. Indirect Measurement................................................................................................................................................ 5

Accuracy .................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

De Minimus Exclusions ............................................................................................................................................................... 5

Reporting ................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Certification .............................................................................................................................................................................. 6

Forest Activities Accepted ........................................................................................................................................................ 6

Baseline...................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Additionality ............................................................................................................................................................................. 7

Permanence ............................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Leakage ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Overview of Existing Registries................................................................................................................................................... 8

U.S. Department of Energy 1605(b) Guidelines........................................................................................................................ 8

California Climate Action Registry ........................................................................................................................................... 9

Georgia Carbon Sequestration Registry..................................................................................................................................... 9

Maine Climate Action Plan........................................................................................................................................................ 9

Oregon Forestry Carbon Offsets................................................................................................................................................ 9

The Climate Trust ...................................................................................................................................................................... 10

Chicago Climate Exchange........................................................................................................................................................ 10

Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism ...................................................................................................................... 10

World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development Project Protocol................................. 10

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry Good Practice Guidance......... 11

Conclusions.................................................................................................................................................................................... 11

References...................................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Appendix A: Comparison of Carbon Registries, Forestry Sector............................................................................................ 15

Appendix B: Forest Carbon Definitions ..................................................................................................................................... 35

Page
iv
 Abstract

There is increasing interest in tools for measuring and reducing emissions 

of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. Two tools that have been 

receiving a lot of attention are carbon markets and carbon registries. 

Carbon registries are established to record and track net carbon emission 

levels over time. These registries provide quantifiable and verifiable carbon 

for trade within a market. This report discusses the benefits and major 

elements of registries and then describes a selection of existing registries 

and protocols with forest carbon components. The report focuses on forests 

because of their carbon storage potential. The purpose of this report is to 

provide a starting point for any State government or other party considering 

the development of a carbon registry with a forestry component. 

Keywords: Carbon, forest, markets, registry, sequestration.

Introduction

There is increasing interest in policy circles in possible tools 

for measuring and reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a 

major greenhouse gas (GHG). Tools that have been receiving 

a lot of attention include carbon markets and carbon registries.

Carbon markets arise when entities interested in reducing 

carbon emissions purchase quantified reductions in carbon 

emissions and/or increases in carbon sequestration from 

other entities, often called carbon offsets. Forest carbon 

offsets reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere by increasing 

carbon storage in forest soils or biomass. 

Carbon registries are established to record and track net 

carbon emission levels over time. Carbon registries have the 

potential to work in concert with carbon markets, helping 

to produce a quantifiable and verifiable carbon offsets for 

trade. Because forests have great carbon storage potential, 

efforts are underway in several regions to increase the use 

of forest carbon offsets and track forest carbon through 

registries. 

The purpose of this report is to provide a starting point 

for any State government or other party considering the 

development of a carbon registry with a forestry component. 

In addition, even though the report is focused on carbon 

sequestration in forests, most of the concepts discussed also 

apply to carbon sequestration in other terrestrial ecosystems 

such as wetlands and grasslands.

The report discusses the benefits and major elements of 

registries and then describes a selection of existing registries 

and protocols with forest carbon components. A comparison 

table of existing registries is provided in appendix A. 

Information in appendix A and the remainder of this report 

was last updated on February 10, 2006. As many of the 

registries are still in development, significant changes may 

have occurred since the research for this report was completed 

in February of 2006. Please contact the individual registries 

for updated information. For readers unfamiliar with the basics 

of GHG emissions and sequestration, a brief background 

section on the key concepts of GHG reporting follows the 

“Introduction.” A glossary of terms is provided in appendix B.

Background Concepts in 

Carbon Emissions and 

Sequestration

The term “greenhouse gas” refers to gases that trap heat 

in the Earth’s atmosphere, namely carbon dioxide (CO2

), 

methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons, 

perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) 

(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001). 

Carbon dioxide is the GHG with the highest concentration 

in the atmosphere, and its atmospheric concentration has 

increased by around 30 percent since the preindustrial 

age (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001). 

Although global GHG reduction efforts address all of the 

gases named above, this report deals only with carbon 

dioxide because of its central role in forest processes.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 

currently around 380 parts per million (Keeling and Whorf 

2005). Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide increase when 

the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (emission 

levels) is larger than the removal of carbon dioxide from 

the atmosphere. Humans contribute to carbon dioxide 

emission levels in a variety of ways including burning 

fossil fuels and deforestation. Removal of carbon dioxide 

from the atmosphere is often referred to as sequestration. 

Sequestration occurs naturally when plants absorb carbon 

dioxide and use it to grow, fixing carbon into biomass. It 

is also possible to sequester carbon through geological 

sequestration, in which carbon dioxide from the atmosphere 

is injected directly into underground geological formations 

(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2004). 

Terrestrial sequestration is the removal of carbon from 

the atmosphere by terrestrial ecosystems such as forests, 

grasslands, and wetlands. The systems that store the carbon, 

A Description and Comparison of Selected Forest 

Carbon Registries: A Guide for States Considering the 

Development of a Forest Carbon Registry

Jessica Call and Jennifer Hayes
2

Major Registry Areas

Here, we describe the key components of registries. These 

are elements that all States need to consider when designing 

their forest carbon registries. While some examples of 

the registry elements are provided in the text, it may also 

be helpful to refer to the comparison of key elements of 

existing registries in appendix A.

In the context of a registry, governance is the legal basis for 

administration and management. It is the authority and the 

basis on which a registry is created, managed, and regulated. 

Several governance components need to be addressed in any 

registry. These include: 

1. Defining the legal basis and purpose of the registry

2. Establishing administrative details for the registry

3. Defining the reporting entity for the registry

Legal Basis and Registry Purpose

First, the legal authority for the registry must be established. 

The legal authority can range from a legislative act to a 

voluntary agreement. Several State registries and the Federal 

1605(b) program [Section 1605(b)] were created through 

legislative acts, with executive agencies then preparing 

the specific guidelines for the registries. Nongovernmental 

registries have also been established by both voluntary and 

legally binding agreements. 

The legal basis for the registry often states the purpose of 

its existence. Diversity in registry purpose causes much of 

the confusion surrounding their development. A paper on 

registries by the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use 

Management (NESCAUM) provides a helpful discussion 

on registry purposes, organizing registries into five tracks 

(Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management 

2005). A single registry may develop one or more of the 

purpose tracks as they are not mutually exclusive. The five 

main purposes described by NESCAUM include:

1. To develop a State inventory of GHG emission and 

sequestration levels 

2. To provide corporate and/or landowner GHG inventory 

assistance 

3. To provide public recognition for entities taking action 

on climate change 

4. To establish baseline protection, so that entities making 

emission reductions now won’t be penalized under 

future regulatory schemes

5. To record emission reduction efforts and make them 

quantifiable and fungible, i.e., tradable in the market

whether they are forests or caverns, are referred to as carbon 

sinks. Forests constitute a large carbon sink, and it is thought 

that net emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere can 

be reduced by growing and preserving forests.

An organization seeking to reduce its carbon dioxide 

emissions levels may decide to fund emissions reduction 

or sequestration projects carried out by another party. The 

second party may be able to produce carbon savings at a 

lower cost, and the organization can, therefore, meet its 

emissions reduction targets more efficiently by purchasing 

the carbon savings, often called an offset, from the second 

party.

Carbon markets are created to facilitate the buying and selling 

of carbon offsets. A current barrier to the efficient functioning 

of carbon markets is that the quantification and verification 

of carbon offsets can be expensive. If the costs of conducting 

trades, known as transaction costs, are too high, then the 

incentives to produce, buy, and sell offsets will be reduced. 

Why a Registry?

A registry can benefit landowners by providing a platform 

for documenting carbon sequestration on their land. In 

order to enter the emerging carbon market, landowners will 

need to quantify and verify how specific actions affect their 

carbon stocks. 

A registry is a place where official records are kept. In the 

context of this report, forest carbon registries are places 

where entities can legally document their carbon emissions 

reduction efforts. A registry does not substitute for a market; 

rather it supplements the market by providing buyers with 

information about legally verifiable offsets. Registries have 

proliferated recently, internationally and nationally. While 

most of these registries are targeted at a broader range of 

GHG emissions, some registries specifically for forest 

carbon have been developed. 

States may wish to develop registries with a forest carbon 

component for several reasons. The State may want to 

encourage and/or mandate reporting of carbon emissions 

and sequestration by companies and landowners in order to 

track emission and sequestration trends in the State. States 

may also want to use the registry to support the development 

of carbon markets in which registered carbon sequestration 

can become a tradable carbon credit. Registries can also be 

used to establish baseline levels of emissions against which 

future GHG reductions can be measured.
3

cooperatives, and whether to allow out-of-state entities to 

report. Finally, every registry must address how it will deal 

with the issue of enforcement. This is a major component of 

governance. Certification, one of the major ways to ensure 

and enforce that carbon registered is actually in existence, is 

discussed later in this report. 

Definition of Reporting Entity

Another critical element of registry design is the definition 

of a reporting entity, i.e., what type and what level of an 

organization reports its activities to the registry. For most 

registries, the reporting entity is any distinct legal entity 

recognized under U.S. law, such as an individual landowner 

or a corporation. Certain registries may define an entity 

further. The California Forest Sector Protocols, for example, 

specify that an entity is “any individual, corporation or other 

legally constituted body, a city or county government agency 

that owns at least 100 acres of trees” (California Climate 

Action Registry 2006). Geographic and temporal boundaries 

are usually defined. For example, the registry may specify 

whether international actions can be reported, and for what 

time period reports may be filed.

Entity vs. Project Reporting

In discussing registry design, an important distinction is 

the difference between entity and project level reporting. 

For entity reporting, the recognized entity reports carbon 

emissions and sequestration for all activities under its 

jurisdiction. A timber company, for example, would report 

the emissions and sequestrations for all its timber lands, 

operations, and facilities. The entity may not show an 

overall reduction in emissions—the only obligation is to 

calculate and report its entire carbon budget.

Project level reporting deals with a planned activity, or 

set of activities, that removes, reduces, or prevents carbon 

emissions in the atmosphere. In this type of reporting a 

forest company might report a specific reforestation project 

that was designed to increase carbon storage. The focus 

would be on that specific project rather than the company’s 

entire carbon budget.

In designing a registry, States will have to decide whether 

to support entity level reporting, project level reporting, or 

both. The decision will depend on the goals of the registry. If 

a registry is to create a State inventory of carbon emissions, 

then entity level reporting will be needed. If the State is 

more interested in tradable carbon offsets then project level 

reporting should be considered. Allowing for both types of 

reporting would create the most diverse and robust registry.

An initial, key decision to make about the registry purpose 

and design is whether to make the registry voluntary or 

mandatory. This decision depends on the purpose of the 

registry and the State’s goals. A State will probably want to 

make the registry mandatory if it wants to use the registry 

to collect accurate and consistent GHG data from a specific 

sector, or a variety of sectors; this data could then be used 

to establish a baseline for a GHG regulatory program. If 

the registry is intended solely for public recognition or to 

provide the private sector with GHG inventory assistance, 

then a voluntary registry will likely suffice. Appendix A 

tracks whether reporting is mandatory or voluntary for each 

of the included registries.

States may also want to use their registries to encourage 

particular forest management practices. These goals can 

vary considerably from State to State, with some States 

using registries to promote forest preservation and others 

using them to recognize active timber management.

Registry Administration

After establishing the legal basis and purpose of the registry, 

the State will need to decide who will actually run the registry. 

States may want an existing State agency to administer the 

registry, or they may wish to establish an independent group 

or designate a private entity to run the registry. California, 

for example, established a board of directors and staff 

for its Climate Action Registry that operates outside of 

other California State agencies (California Climate Action 

Registry 2006). Georgia, however, is developing its registry 

through the Georgia Forestry Commission (Georgia General 

Assembly 2004). States must also determine how the registry 

will be funded. Will the registry be created and maintained 

through State appropriated funds, will it charge a user fee, or 

will it use some other source of funding? 

The State will also need to establish the registry 

infrastructure. At a minimum, there should be two parts 

to the infrastructure: (1) a database to house the registry 

information and (2) a reporting system, including guidelines 

to define entity and/or project boundaries. For example, 

will entities list their plots by latitude and longitude, 

georeferencing, or by land deed reference number? The 

registry will need to develop a basic reporting form that is 

consistent with the format of the registry and its database. 

The specific elements that will need to be reported to the 

registry are discussed throughout the remainder of this report.

Every registry must also determine who can report carbon 

emissions and offsets. Items for consideration include: 

whether to require a minimum number of acres for 

landowners to participate, whether to recognize landowner 
4

Ownership

Depending on the purpose and scope of the registry, States 

may want to consider the issue of carbon ownership. Carbon 

ownership is primarily an issue for States that want their 

registry to create and promote tradable carbon credits. If the 

sequestration projects listed in the registry are going to be 

traded in a carbon market then the registry can facilitate this 

process by establishing who retains the right to claim carbon 

ownership (at any given point in time) and which carbon 

pools are included in that ownership. 

For example, who retains ownership rights if a third party 

is involved? Suppose a landowner has reforested 200 acres 

of land with trees donated by a local utility company. The 

State registry will need to establish who retains ownership 

rights to the carbon sequestered through the project—the 

landowner or the company that donated the trees. If the 

registry wants to recognize wood products as a carbon 

pool, then ownership issues can become even more 

complicated. If a landowner harvests his or her timber, a 

certain percentage of the tree carbon will remain sequestered 

in the harvested wood. When the wood is sold to a timber 

company, a State registry that recognizes this carbon pool 

will need to determine who retains ownership rights for the 

carbon—the original landowner or the timber buyer who 

now owns the wood.

A State may also decide that ownership issues are outside 

the scope of its registry. The California Registry, for 

example, considers ownership questions to be outside its 

realm of responsibility. If a State wants to promote the 

trading of carbon credits then it may need to establish 

guidelines for carbon ownership. This will be especially 

important for registries that recognize wood products as a 

carbon sink.

Liability

A registry’s liability policy answers the question of who will 

be held responsible if a project or entity fails to sequester 

the carbon it initially said that it would. This relates back 

to the ability of a registry to enforce and ensure that carbon 

registered is actual carbon sequestered. 

Miscalculations, changes in project design, and natural 

disturbances can cause the actual amount of carbon 

sequestered to be different from the original projection. 

Natural disturbances such as fire and storms are of particular 

concern when dealing with liability. If a reforested area 

burns in a wildfire, for example, a registry’s liability policy 

will need to address who is responsible for making up the 

lost carbon and how the carbon “makeup” will occur.

There are two general approaches to liability in the 

marketplace—buyer liability and seller liability. In buyer 

liability, the purchaser of the carbon credit is responsible 

for any shortfall in the carbon sequestered by a project. In 

seller liability, the original landowner or project designer is 

responsible for any difference between the expected and actual 

carbon sequestration. Seller liability generally encourages 

heavy trading because more buyers enter the market since 

they bear no risk if the sequestration project fails. On the other 

hand, seller liability can be difficult to enforce, especially in a 

loose and emerging global carbon market. With buyer liability, 

the offset buyer will be responsible if the project fails, so the 

buyer is likely to buy only offsets that have little risk. The 

disadvantage of buyer liability is that it may discourage offset 

buyers from entering the market (Zhang 2001).

States could also develop an insurance program of sorts, to 

offset any shortfall in carbon levels that may occur. Policy 

groups have discussed the idea of using certified public 

or private lands as backup carbon storage, so that carbon 

stored in these reserves could be substituted for shortfalls in 

the registry projects. Another possibility is to have registry 

participants reserve a certain amount of their sequestration 

to make up for any carbon shortfalls. The Chicago Climate 

Exchange, for example, has its members reserve 20 percent 

of their sequestration or emission reductions to offset any 

shortfalls in their carbon emission reduction (Personal 

communication. 2005. Michael Walsh, Executive Vice 

President, and Murali Kanakasabai, Senior Econonist, 

Chicago Climate Exchange, 190 South La Salle St., Suite 

1100, Chicago, IL 60603).

Quantification of Carbon 

A central component of the registry is how to quantify an 

entity’s carbon stocks and carbon sequestration activities. 

There are two basic components to this question: (1) 

what carbon will be quantified, and (2) what methods are 

accepted for the carbon measurement.

Types of forest carbon—It is helpful to group forest carbon 

into categories and carbon pools, as in the tabulation below, 

which was adapted from the California Forest Sector Protocol.

Category Carbon pool

Living biomass Tree biomass

Shrubs and herbaceous understory

Onsite dead biomass Standing dead biomass

Lying dead wood

Litter

Soil Soil

Offsite Wood products
5

Carbon look-up tables provide standard estimates of forest 

carbon based on forest type, age, etc. The forest carbon 

data is generally the result of both forest carbon models and 

formal forest inventories. The look-up tables can be based 

on regional forest types or may be based on more locally 

specific information.

A registry needs to be clear about what types of carbon 

measurement methods it will accept. The California 

Registry, for example, requires direct sampling, while 

Section 1605(b) accepts a variety of look-up tables, models, 

and direct sampling options. 

Accuracy

Designers of a registry will need to decide what level of 

accuracy it requires for carbon estimates. Most carbon 

models and look-up tables have an associated accuracy 

level; statistical confidence is typically used to assess 

the accuracy of direct sampling. The California Registry 

requires that the standard error of the carbon estimate be no 

> 20 percent of the mean carbon estimate (at a 90-percent 

confidence interval). The California Registry also applies a 

sliding scale of deductions for standard errors < 20 percent. 

For example, if the sampling error is between 5 and 10 

percent of the mean estimate, then a 10-percent deduction 

is applied to the corresponding carbon pool (California 

Climate Action Registry 2006, Forest Protocols, June 2005, 

www.climateregistry.org/PROTOCOLS/FP).

In contrast, Section 1605(b) ranks estimation methods from 

level A to level D, with level A being the most accurate 

(U.S. Department of Energy 2005). For the forestry sector, 

level A estimates are from direct measurement using a 

sampling system designed to estimate changes in carbon 

stocks within 10 percent of the true value. Level B estimates 

typically use models to provide estimates within 20 percent 

of the true value, and level C estimates use look-up tables 

to provide estimates that are within 30 percent of the 

true value. Level D is more than 30 percent off the true 

estimate, so is considered to have inadequate accuracy. 

Where a combination of estimation methods are employed, 

a reporting entity’s estimates must average at least level B 

accuracy to count as officially registered.

De Minimus Exclusions 

Registries may allow entities to exclude a small amount of 

emissions from registry reporting, creating “de minimus 

exclusions.” Typically this is done for the smaller emission 

components that are difficult to measure. An example could 

be a forestry company with a very small fleet of vehicles for 

employee use. If vehicle emissions are likely to account for 

A registry must establish which of these carbon pools 

entities are required to report and which pools are voluntary. 

The California Forest Project Protocol requires that living 

tree biomass, standing dead biomass, and lying dead wood 

be reported. The remaining pools—shrubs and herbaceous 

understory, litter, soil, and wood products—are voluntary 

and, therefore, not certified (California Climate Action 

Registry, www.climateregistry.org).

In deciding which carbon pools to make mandatory, important 

considerations include the quality and cost of the existing 

methods for measuring the carbon pool and the contribution 

of a carbon pool to the net change in forest carbon. For 

example, the measurement of soil carbon tends to be very 

costly and time intensive. While soil carbon is a large 

portion of a forest’s overall carbon stock, the size of the pool 

often changes slowly and is difficult to measure over short 

timeframes. Because of this, many forestry registries have 

decided to make the reporting of soil carbon voluntary. 

Measurement Methodology

Direct vs. Indirect Measurement

There are direct and indirect ways to measure forest carbon. 

Direct measurement involves sampling of the forested 

area, while indirect measurement relies either on models or 

carbon look-up tables that estimate the amount of carbon in 

a specific forest type of a certain age. Registry design must 

balance the need for data accuracy with the need for low 

transaction costs. If the costs for registry participation are 

too high, then the transaction costs for any associated carbon 

markets will discourage participation. If the measurement 

methods are too relaxed, then transaction costs may be low, 

but the data will not be credible enough to satisfy registry 

requirements or provide a basis for market transactions.

Direct sampling offers the best opportunity for accuracy, but 

is usually the most expensive and time intensive. Sampling 

methodology and sample plots must be established for the 

forest, measurements of the required carbon pools must 

be made within the sample plots, and methods must be 

developed to translate field measurements into carbon mass 

estimates for the entire forest area. 

Models estimate the amount of carbon in a forest using 

factors such as timber volume, forest type, stand-size class, 

etc. The specificity of the model will depend on the detail 

of the inventory data that it receives. Models with local 

information such as tree sizes will provide more detailed 

output than models that only require general input such as 

forest type and stand-size class.
6

a very small fraction of the company’s overall emissions, 

then a registry may want to allow this emission source to be 

excluded from the company’s report. This prevents entities 

from spending a large amount of resources measuring an 

emission source that has little impact on the entity’s overall 

carbon budget. 

Section 1605(b) allows up to 3 percent of an entity’s 

emissions to be omitted from its reporting (U.S. Department 

of Energy 2005). The California Registry doesn’t allow 

for any de minimus exclusions for required carbon stocks 

in either the entity or forest project protocols. [In effect, 

however, California does allow an exemption by making the 

reporting of soil and leaf litter carbon voluntary (California 

Climate Action Registry Forest Project Protocol, June 

2005).] Most other registry programs have not addressed 

whether they will allow for de minimus exclusions; this is 

an issue they will need to address with their stakeholders.

Reporting

Registries must establish both a timeline and process for 

reporting. The timeline addresses how often an entity must 

report and the lag time between the reporting deadline and 

the time period covered by the report. Most registries to date 

require annual reporting. California requires that annual 

reports for emissions occurring in the previous calendar year 

be submitted by August 31 of the current year (California 

Climate Action Registry Forest Sector Protocol, June 2005); 

Section 1605(b) requires that the reports for the previous 

calendar year be submitted by July 1 of the current year (U.S. 

Department of Energy 2005).

Certification 

A State will need to establish a process for certifying the 

quality and accuracy of the entity and/or project reports 

submitted to the registry. The most common approach is 

third-party certification, in which an independent, third party 

follows a set procedure for certifying each project or entity 

report submitted to the registry. The California Registry, 

for example, has an approved set of third-party certifiers 

and provides them with a standardized approach to follow 

in the certification process. In California, project and entity 

reporting must be certified every 5 years (California Climate 

Action Registry 2006, Forest Sector Protocol and Forest 

Project Protocol, June 2005 ).

If the registry has certification and/or inventory 

requirements, a reporting schedule will have to be developed 

for these as well. The California Forestry Sector Protocol 

requires third-party certification reports every 5 years, with 

a deadline of December 31 for a certification period that 

ends in the previous calendar year. California also requires 

that a forest inventory is completed every 10 years, so this 

would be an additional reporting requirement.

Not all registries require third-party certification. The U.S. 

Department of Energy (DOE) 1605(b) guidelines allow 

entities to self-certify their reports. However, registries with 

third-party certification are generally seen as providing more 

accurate and reliable information.

Forest Activities Accepted 

It is important to define the types of forest activities that 

will be accepted into a State’s registry. This decision might 

be based on the purpose of the registry, the prevalent forest 

activities in a given State, or the quality of the existing 

carbon measurement tools for that forestry practice. 

Afforestation and reforestation are the activities most 

commonly accepted by registries, primarily because they 

can be measured with the most certainty. 

Effects of forest preservation and forest management 

activities on carbon pools are usually more difficult to 

measure. For forest preservation, the calculation of carbon 

gained depends on an accurate projection of what would 

have happened to the land without the preservation action. 

There has been considerable research on the carbon 

sequestration gains of various forest management activities, 

such as the research conducted for the Maine Climate 

Action Plan that estimates the carbon gains from various 

forest management practices (Personal communication. 

Rich Birdsey, 2005. Northern Global Change Program 

Manager, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, 

Northeast Area Research Station, 11 Campus Blvd. Suite 

200, Newton Square, PA 19073. Personal communication. 

2005. Kevin McDonald, Data Manager, Maine Department 

of Environmental Protection, 17 State House Station, 

Augusta, ME 04333). While we know more now that we did 

10 years ago, there are still uncertainties and the amount of 

carbon stored is usually much less than in afforestation or 

reforestation projects.

In addition to the types of forest projects accepted, States 

must also decide whether to require registry activities to 

meet additional forest management standards. For example, 

several existing registries require that registered forest 

activities be conducted in accordance with State best 

management practices (BMP) or in a certified sustainable 

forest (California Climate Action Registry Forest Sector 

Protocol, June 2005) (Personal communication. 2005. 

Nathan McClure, Associate Chief Forester, Georgia 

Forestry Commission, 5645 Riggins Mill Rd., Dry Branch, 

GA 31020). States may also want to take a position on 
7

accepting nonnative trees. California, for example, only 

accepts native California forest types in its registry. 

Baseline

In the context of carbon registries, a baseline is a point in 

time or a level of carbon from which an entity will measure 

changes in carbon stocks. There are many techniques for 

calculating baselines, but most of them can be described 

either as base-year methods or as moving baseline methods. 

In base-year methods a specific year (or span of several 

years) is selected for initial carbon measurement. Future 

measurements are then compared against this initial baseyear measurement to determine the amount of carbon 

sequestered during the interval.

In moving baseline methods, one calculates a moving baseline 

that projects what the level of carbon would have been if the 

project were never undertaken. This projected baseline is 

then compared to the actual measured carbon to determine 

the change in carbon stocks due to the project. For project 

reporting, the moving baseline approach is better than the 

base-year approach at addressing the question of additionality, 

i.e., the additional amount of carbon sequestered that would 

not have been sequestered had the activity not taken place.

Additionality 

Additionality addresses the question of whether the carbon 

storage produced by a project is actually additional to what 

would have occurred had the project not taken place. If 

a registry is to record projects that create a quantifiable 

and fungible carbon offset, then it will need to address 

additionality requirements. The true sequestration gain of 

the project cannot be known unless the registry also looks 

at what level of sequestration would have taken place in the 

absence of the project. 

For example, imagine a project that reforests 500 acres 

of land where a timber harvest recently took place. This 

reforestation project would report its carbon gains against a 

baseline level of carbon storage. Imagine that the State where 

the project occurs has established a single year baseline 

for reforestation projects, in which the base year is 1-year 

postharvest. Under this baseline approach, the carbon storage 

generated by the project would be all of the carbon present in 

the system at the end of the project term minus the amount of 

carbon that was present 1-year post timber harvest. However, 

the State law where this project occurs requires that all timber 

harvests be replanted to produce a certain basal area in 25 

years. The level of forest carbon generated through this State 

requirement then becomes the expected base carbon stock 

(the expected basal-area stocking level in 25 years). All of 

the carbon stored since 1-year postharvest is therefore not 

truly “additional.” By State law, the landowner would have 

had to replant the land anyway, so the legally required basal 

area would have been present without the carbon project. 

The reforestation project will report different levels of 

carbon storage depending on the additionality requirements it 

follows. The carbon gains of the project will be much smaller 

if the landowner only counts as additional any carbon gains 

that exceed the State’s basal-area requirement.

The idea of additionality is contentious and has been 

addressed differently by most States. For this reason, this 

is one area that could lead to future debate between States, 

regarding what additionality provisions should be required. 

California only counts as additional any forest projects that 

go above and beyond State forestry requirements, whereas 

the entity reporting required by Section 1605(b) has no 

specific requirements to prove additionality. If an entity 

using Section 1605(b) counted all carbon growth from a 

base year as additional, then a carbon offset in California 

would not be equivalent to the carbon offset under Section 

1605(b) because they would have different reference points. 

Permanence 

Permanence refers to the ability to ensure that carbon will 

be sequestered for an agreed upon time period. Entities 

registering forest carbon can work towards permanence by 

utilizing long-term conservation easements. This method 

is required by California in its forest carbon protocols. 

The easement allows the landowner to practice forestry, 

but ensures that the overall landscape is protected and will 

retain carbon for a designated time period. It may be better 

to consider certain forest carbon credits temporary rather 

than permanent. Registries could offer shorter contract 

times for shorter term forest projects, where carbon credits 

were guaranteed on a 10- or 20-year basis. Permanence 

is an especially important issue for registries that are 

intended to promote marketable offsets—offset buyers will 

want to know the duration of the carbon storage they have 

purchased.

Leakage 

Leakage is the shifting of activities from inside a carbon 

offset project’s boundaries to outside the offset project’s 

boundaries. This shift results in an increase in carbon 

emissions outside the project’s physical boundaries. There 

are two types of leakage: (1) activity-shifting leakage and 

(2) market leakage. Activity-shifting leakage occurs when 

an activity is simply shifted from one area of a company’s 

property to another. For example, if a landowner conserves 

forestland on one part of his or her property as an offset 
8

project, but relocates the timber harvest to another section 

of his or her land as a result, then leakage occurs. When 

there is leakage, the actual carbon sequestration will be the 

sequestration by the official project minus the emissions 

from the leakage activity. The California Forest Project 

Protocols require that reporting entities account for activityshifting leakage (California Climate Action Registry Forest 

Project Protocol, June 2005). 

Market leakage occurs when a carbon offset project causes a 

change in activity outside of the reporting entity’s boundaries 

through shifts in market demand and supply. For example, 

if timber harvesting is reduced on one landowner’s land in a 

region, then demand may simply shift to another landowner in 

the region, resulting in no net increase in carbon sequestration 

for the region (Sampson and Grover 2005). Market leakage 

is very difficult to measure and such measurement is not 

currently required by existing State registries.

Overview of Existing Registries

The spreadsheet in appendix A provides a comparison of 

existing carbon registries for the forestry sector, focusing 

on the most developed U.S. State programs (including the 

Oregon affiliated nonprofit Climate Trust), the U.S. Federal 

registry [1605(b)], and two different carbon markets—the 

Chicago Climate Exchange and the market for Clean 

Development Mechanisms (CDM) established by the Kyoto 

Protocol. The spreadsheet also summarizes the recently 

issued GHG project protocols that were developed by 

the World Resources Institute (WRI) and World Business 

Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). The WRI/

WBCSD Project Protocol is an addition to the original WRI/

WBCSD GHG Protocol, which many consider to be the 

international standard for GHG emission reporting.

The Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) 

good practice guidance issued by the Intergovernmental 

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is another set of reporting 

standards that are frequently referred to in the GHG 

literature. The LULUCF guidance includes broader based 

guidelines for multiple land use sectors (cropland, grassland, 

forestland, etc.) and is, therefore, better suited to large-scale 

inventories than specific registries. The LULUCF guidance 

is still included in the spreadsheet comparison, however, 

to provide additional background information on carbon 

reporting techniques.

Each spreadsheet column refers to a specific registry and 

each row refers to a registry element to be compared across 

registries. For better organization registry elements are 

grouped into major registry areas discussed previously in 

this report, including: 

1. Governance

2. Ownership

3. Liability

4. Types of forest carbon

5. Measurement methodology

6. Reporting

7. Certification

8. Forest activities accepted

9. Baseline and additionality

10. Permanence

11. Leakage

The descriptions of these registry elements provide a 

detailed comparison of the major carbon registries with a 

forestry element. A more general description of each major 

registry is provided below. Note that not all of the programs 

described follow a conventional registry format. Each 

program, however, contains common registry elements that 

provide examples to States considering the development of 

their own registry or carbon offset programs.

U.S. Department of Energy 1605(b) 

Guidelines

Section 1605(b) of the 1992 Energy Policy Act required the 

Department of Energy (DOE) to create a national registry 

for the voluntary reporting of GHG emissions. DOE issued 

guidelines for Section 1605(b) in 1994, and these are the 

guidelines currently in use by reporting entities. DOE 

issued revised guidelines for public comment in the spring 

of 2005 and is currently reviewing public comments and 

making needed changes to the revised guidelines. Reporting 

entities will continue to use the 1994 guidelines until the 

final, revised guidelines are issued. This report discusses the 

interim revised guidelines that were issued in the spring of 

2005.

Section 1605(b) is organized around entity reporting, in 

which an entity is a “distinct entity under US, state or 

local law.” Under this system, businesses report the net 

GHG emissions for their organization as a whole instead 

of reporting individual sequestration or emission activities 

separately. Section 1605(b) does not actually prohibit project 
9

level reporting, but it lacks the project-specific guidelines 

found in most registries with project level reporting. 

Section 1605(b) accepts a variety of GHG measurement 

and accounting techniques and does not require third-party 

certification. For further detail on Section 1605(b) please 

refer to the comparison matrix in appendix A.

California Climate Action Registry

The California Climate Action Registry was created 

through California SB1771 and SB527, and was signed 

into law in 2001. The enabling legislation establishes the 

California Registry as a voluntary registry, but also states 

that the purpose of the registry is to establish a baseline for 

emissions against which any future GHG regulations may 

be applied. Along these lines, California also guarantees 

its “best efforts” to ensure that registry participants’ early 

actions are considered in the event of any future State, 

Federal, or international regulatory scheme.

The California Registry has established a general protocol 

for all registry participants and industry specific protocols 

that include a forestry sector protocol and a forestry project 

protocol. The forestry sector protocol deals with entity level 

reporting, in which an entity is “an individual, corporation or 

other legally constituted body, a city or county government 

agency that owns at least 100 acres of trees.” The forestry 

project protocol describes the requirements for project 

reporting, in which a project is a planned set of activities to 

reduce carbon dioxide emissions through carbon sequestration 

in forests. As a whole, the California Registry has much 

stricter requirements than Section 1605(b), especially for 

project level reporting. The forestry sector and forestry project 

protocols are described separately in appendix A.

Georgia Carbon Sequestration Registry

Georgia SB356 of 2004 requires the Georgia Forestry 

Commission to create the Georgia Carbon Sequestration 

Registry. The stated purpose of the Georgia Registry is to 

encourage voluntary actions to reduce GHG emissions and 

to ensure that sources in the State receive proper recognition 

for certified sequestration efforts under any future Federal or 

international regulation scheme.

Unlike Section 1605(b) and the California Registry, the 

Georgia Registry is intended solely for terrestrial carbon 

sequestration projects. Many of the specifics of the registry 

are still in development, but a few provisions have been 

established. The Georgia Registry will be an automated 

registry that accepts electronic submissions, ownership of 

the carbon will not be tied permanently to the land, and 

forests registered must contain native Georgia trees and 

be managed in accordance with Georgia’s Forestry BMPs. 

Further information is provided in appendix A.

Maine Climate Action Plan

Maine Public Law 237, passed in 2003, instructs the Maine 

Department of Environmental Protection to create a Climate 

Action Plan for the State. The Climate Action Plan created 

calls for the creation of a statewide GHG registry and 

proposes measures to cut Maine’s GHG emissions to 10 

percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Efforts to create a Maine GHG registry have merged with 

efforts to create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Registry 

(RGGR) for the Northeast. The RGGR is currently in 

development and should be completed in 2006. The plan 

is that the RGGR will not contain any specific guidelines 

for the forestry sector. Instead, the RGGR is to defer to the 

development of offset protocols by the Regional Greenhouse 

Gas Initiative, a cooperative agreement by Northeastern and 

Mid-Atlantic States to reduce GHG emissions. Concurrently, 

the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture has 

awarded a grant to the Pinchot Institute to work with Maine, 

Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to develop regional protocols, 

with the intention that these protocols will be applied to 

State and regional registries in the Northeast. 

Since RGGR and the Pinchot Institute’s work are still 

underway, the comparison matrix in appendix A contains 

fewer specifics on the Maine registry. However, there has 

been significant research in Maine on the potential to increase 

carbon storage through the use of wood products, alternative 

timber management practices, and the use of woody biomass 

for fuel. It is, therefore, likely that any future Maine registry 

will allow these practices to be registered as part of an 

entity’s carbon budget. The efforts in Maine and at RGGR 

also provide a good example of how State registry efforts can 

work and potentially merge with regional registries.

Oregon Forestry Carbon Offsets

Oregon HB2200 (2001) authorized the Oregon State 

Forester to aggregate and market carbon offsets from 

forestry projects on State and private land and called for the 

creation of an accounting system to calculate and certify the 

carbon offsets created by the forestry projects. While this 

doesn’t create a conventional carbon registry for Oregon, 

it does ask the department of forestry to create an offset 

accounting system that would contain many of the same 

elements present in registries.

The development of the accounting system and the process 

for aggregating and marketing forestry projects is more or less 

on hold in Oregon as of fall 2005. The Oregon Department 
10

of Forestry has found little demand for carbon offsets from 

forestry projects, so it is waiting until demand for the offset 

project increases to proceed further with the process.

The Climate Trust

The Climate Trust is a nonprofit organization whose mission 

is to provide GHG offset projects and to advance sound 

offset policy. Offset projects are designed to meet or exceed 

evolving international standards. The Climate Trust does 

not operate a registry per se, but it does have protocols for 

measuring and certifying offset projects and these protocols 

include many of the same elements found in registries.

Interested parties can purchase certified carbon offsets from 

the Climate Trust to meet their own carbon reduction needs. 

For example, new Oregon utilities are required to offset 

their GHG emission by 17 percent. Many companies are 

doing this by purchasing offsets from the Climate Trust. The 

Climate Trust operates by issuing Requests for Proposals for 

sequestration projects, and then evaluating project proposals 

based on their calculation and reporting schemes, likelihood 

of success, and other factors. The projects are, therefore, 

funded before the actual sequestration takes place, and the 

project leader uses the funding to implement and verify the 

proposed forestry project. The carbon purchase agreement 

defines carbon ownership rights, performance evaluation, 

and additional monitoring details that are part of an ongoing 

project management plan. In order to diversify its carbon 

portfolio, Climate Trust is limiting forestry projects to 25 

percent of its future offset projects. Further information on 

the Climate Trust is provided in appendix A. 

Chicago Climate Exchange

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is a voluntary, pilot 

GHG cap-and-trade program through which participants 

make voluntary and legally binding agreements to reduce 

emission to 4 percent below 1998 to 2001 levels by 2010. 

(Under the rules for CCX phase II, all CCX members must 

make a legally binding commitment to achieve entity-wide 

emission reductions of 6 percent below baseline by the 

end of 2010.) The infrastructure for the trading program 

essentially functions as a registry with the additional 

component of carbon credit trading. CCX members include 

commercial forestry companies, and CCX has developed 

protocols for the forestry companies to quantify and report 

their carbon stocks. CCX also permits the use of forestry 

projects as exchange offsets. Through exchange offsets, 

forest carbon sequestration projects become verified carbon 

credits that can be traded among CCX members. Please 

refer to appendix A for further details on CCX commercial 

forestry sector protocols and the protocols for CCX 

exchange offsets. 

Kyoto Protocol Clean Development 

Mechanism

The Kyoto Protocol authorizes annex 1 countries (developed 

nations) to offset 1 percent of their emissions through 

sequestration activities via CDMs. CDMs are carbon 

offset projects in developing countries and can range from 

renewable energy projects to reforestation. Developed 

nations may wish to fund CDMs because the costs of 

the offset projects may be less than the cost of emission 

reductions within the developed nation’s own boundaries. 

Afforestation and reforestation are the only forestry projects 

recognized through the CDM. CDMs must be validated 

and verified by a third party and ultimately approved by the 

CDM Executive Board. This process has proved lengthy 

and complex, and as of November 2005 no forestry projects 

have been approved by the CDM Executive Board. Further 

details on CDMs are found in appendix A.

World Resources Institute and World 

Business Council for Sustainable 

Development Project Protocol

WRI/WBCSD issued the GHG Protocol for Project 

Accounting (Project Protocol) in December 2005. 

The Project Protocol is a part of the Greenhouse Gas 

Protocol Initiative, a multistakeholder partnership of 

businesses, nongovernmental organizations, governments, 

and academics convened by WRI/WBCSD to develop 

internationally accepted GHG accounting and reporting 

standards. The Project Protocol is the second module 

developed by the GHG initiative; the first module was 

the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting 

Standard, which is generally accepted as the international 

standard for GHG reporting. 

The Project Protocol provides principles and methods for 

quantifying and reporting GHG reductions from projects 

that reduce GHG emissions, increase the storage of carbon, 

or increase GHG removals from the atmosphere. The 

purpose of the Project Protocol is to provide a credible and 

transparent approach for quantifying GHG reductions in 

order to enhance the credibility of project reporting and 

promote harmonization among existing project-based GHG 

initiatives and programs.

The Project Protocol is a general protocol that is applicable 

to all economic sectors. Protocols with specific instructions 

for the land use sector are slated for issue sometime in 2006.
11

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

Change and Land Use, Land-Use 

Change and Forestry Good Practice 

Guidance

The IPCC, established by the World Meteorological 

Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, 

has issued guidelines on calculating national GHG 

inventories. The recommendations for the forestry sector 

are included in the 2003 report entitled “Good Practice 

Guidance for Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry.” 

The LULUCF guidance is targeted at the development of 

national GHG inventories, which examine GHG emissions 

on a much broader scale than GHG registries do. The 

LULUCF guidance, therefore, does not provide all the 

information needed for development of a carbon registry. 

It does, however, provide general principles and methods 

for GHG accounting that should also be helpful in registry 

development. 

Conclusions

While each forest carbon program discussed in this report 

includes a registry in some shape or form, the goals of the 

registries vary significantly. These differences in purpose, 

along with other factors, contribute to the variation seen 

across other registry elements. The most significant 

differences are in the following areas:

• Baseline and additionality: Registries such as the 

California Forestry Project Protocol and the Kyoto 

Protocol’s CDM take a strict approach to additionality, 

in which projects must prove that the carbon sequestered 

would not have been sequestered without the project in 

question. This requires the use of a moving baseline that 

projects how much carbon would have been sequestered 

in the absence of the project, given current conservation 

trends, forestry regulations, etc. The other approach, from 

the entity rather than a project perspective, is to use the 

carbon stocks from a starting year (or average of years) 

as the baseline and to account any increase in carbon 

stocks from the base year as additional carbon stored. 

This is the approach specified by Section 1605(b). For 

a single project, the amount of stored carbon calculated 

with a moving baseline will not be the same as the 

amount of stored carbon calculated with a fixed baseline, 

and this difference gives rise to product compatibility 

issues within emerging carbon markets. 

• Forest activities accepted: Registries vary in the types 

of forest activities they recognize, with the primary 

difference being the types of forest management practices 

allowed. At one end of the spectrum is the Kyoto 

Protocol’s CDM, which only recognizes reforestation and 

afforestation projects. States such as Maine and Georgia 

plan to allow working timberlands in their registry and 

are considering including wood products as a recognized 

carbon pool in their registries. If wood products are 

included, then a carbon offset registered with Georgia 

or Maine would not meet the criteria for a CDM offset, 

creating nonequivalent offsets in the marketplace. The 

methodologies for projects such as forest biofuel use 

and reduction of forest fire risk require more research 

and development at this point, but may be included in a 

registry in the future.

• Permanence: Permanence requirements of existing 

registries differ. For example, the California Registry 

requires a permanent forest easement, while Section 

1605(b) has no such requirement and simply measures 

carbon stocks from year to year. These differences 

would not necessarily make the products of the registries 

incompatible, but there would need to be a system to 

differentiate carbon credits based on the storage period of 

the carbon. 

• Certification requirements: The primary difference 

here is whether a registry requires third-party 

certification or allows self-certification. Most registries 

require third-party certification, although the specific 

certification standards may vary. Section 1605(b) is the 

major exception—entities can certify their own reports. 

The rigor and consistency of a certification scheme are 

important to ensuring confidence in a registry and the 

carbon credits it may produce.

Differences between registries can also be seen as either 

nuts and bolts differences in accounting and methodology 

or as differences in the forest policies that governments 

and organizations want to advance with their registries. 

The challenge is to create registries with enough common 

elements to promote national level carbon credit trading 

with manageable transaction costs while still allowing States 

the flexibility needed to advance their own particular forest 

policy goals. 

A difficulty for all registries will be the balance between 

data credibility and data costs. Credibility requires highquality data, but high-quality data is expensive. If the data 

requirements are too stringent, then the transaction costs of 

the registry may prevent significant participation. States will 

need to assess the particular data needs of their registries 

to design data requirements that create trustworthy data 

without discouraging registry participation.
12

References

California Climate Action Registry. 2006. About us. 

http://www.climateregistry.org/ABOUTUS/. [Date accessed: 

February 16, 2006].

California Climate Action Registry. Forest project protocol. 

http://www.climateregistry.org/PROTOCOLS/. [Date accessed: 

June 2005].

California Climate Action Registry. Forest sector protocol. 

http://www.climateregistry.org/PROTOCOLS/. [Date accessed: 

June 2005].

Climate Trust. 2005. Request for carbon offsets. 

http://www.climatetrust.org/solicitations_2005_RFP.php. 

[Date accessed: November 2005].

CO2e.com. Homepage. http://www.co2e.com/common/faq.asp?i

ntPageElementID=30136&intCategoryID=93. [Date accessed: 

November 2005]. 

Georgia General Assembly. 2004. Georgia Carbon Sequestration 

Registry Act (SB 356). http://www.legis.state.ga.us/

legis/2003_04/sum/sb356.htm. [Date accessed: December 

2005].

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2001. Climate change 

2001: the scientific basis. Cambridge University Press. 

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/ [Date accessed: 

August 2005.]

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2004. IPCC 

special report on carbon dioxide “Capture and Storage.” 

http://arch.rivm.nl/env/int/ipcc/pages_media/SRCCS-final/

IPCCSpecialReportonCarbondioxideCaptureandStorage.htm. 

[Date accessed: August 2005]. 

Keeling, C.D.; Whorf, T.P. 2005. Atmospheric CO2

 records from 

sites in the SIO air sampling network. In: Trends: a compendium 

of data on global change. Oak Ridge, TN: U.S. Department 

of Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Carbon Dioxide 

Information Analysis Center.

Maine Department of Environmental Protection. 2004. Maine 

climate action plan. http://maineghg.raabassociates.org/

finalplan.asp. [Date accessed: August 2005].

Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management. 2005. Draft 

State GHG registry emissions information programs issue paper. 

http://www.rggr.us/documents.html and 

http://www.easternclimateregistry.org//registriesbackground.html

(summary). [Date accessed: December 2005].

Oregon General Assembly. 2001. HB 2200. Relating to forest 

carbon offsets. http://www.leg.state.or.us/01reg/measures/

hb2200.dir/hb2200.en.html. [Date accessed: August 2005].

Pew Center on Climate Change. 2005. Global warming basics. 

http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/. 

[Date accessed: December 2005].

Sampson, R.N.; Grover, M. 2005. Carbon sequestration: a 

handbook. National Carbon Offset Coalition and The Sampson 

Group, Inc. 305 W. Mercury, Room 408, Butte, MT 59701. 

http://ncoc.us. [Date accessed: February 2006].

United Nationals Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

Clean Development Mechanism homepage. 

http://cdm.unfccc.int/. [Date accessed: December 2005].

U.S. Department of Energy. 2005. Section 1605(b) of the Energy 

Policy Act of 1992: guidelines for voluntary greenhouse gas 

reporting. http://www.pi.energy.gov/enhancingGHGregistry/

generalguidelines.html. [Date accessed: December 2005].

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Homepage. 

http://www.epa.gov/sequestration/baselines.html. 

[Date accessed: August 2005].

World Resources Institute/World Business Council for Sustainable 

Development. 2005. GHG protocol for project accounting. 

http://www.ghgprotocol.org/. [Date accessed: December 2005].

Zhang, ZhongXiang. 2001. The liability rules under international 

GHG emissions trading. Energy Policy. 29(7): 501-508.
Appendices

15

Program

Federal 1605(b)

program

California Forestry Sector 

Protocol, entity reporting

California Forestry Project 

Protocol, project certification

Governance

Web site http://www.pi.energy.gov/

enhancingGHGregistry/

generalguidelines.html

http://www.climateregistry.org/

PROTOCOLS/

http://www.climateregistry.org/

PROTOCOLS/

Legal basis The basis is a Federal law, 

Section 1605(b) of the 

Energy Policy Act of 1992. 

The DOE administers the 

program.

The basis is California laws 

SB1771 (2000) and SB812 (2002). 

The California Registry Board 

administers this voluntary GHG 

registry.

The basis is California laws SB1771 

(2000) and SB812 (2002). The 

California Registry Board administers 

this voluntary GHG registry.

Purpose The program is a voluntary 

GHG registry. Anyone 

can report any activities to 

the registry that they like. 

Reports are not registered 

unless they meet certain 

quality assurance standards.

The program is a voluntary GHG 

registry. It accepts all GHG 

emissions data, both biological 

and nonbiological, e.g., emissions 

data for electricity use in forestry 

practices.

The program provides certification of 

GHG emission reductions. It is meant 

to provide for transparent, credible, 

and consistent accounting of GHG 

reductions in the forestry sector.

Current status Final draft guidelines that 

incorporate the latest round 

of public comments are 

under revision by DOE.

The program is up and running. The program is up and running.

Voluntary or 

required

Voluntary Voluntary Voluntary

Registry 

management/

State agency 

responsibilities

The program is administered 

by the DOE.

The program is administered by 

California Climate Action Registry, 

an entity created by the State 

government to manage the registry. 

The program uses an online reporting 

system (CARROT).

The program is administered by 

California Climate Action Registry, an 

entity created by the State government 

to manage the registry. The program 

uses an online reporting system 

(CARROT).

Definition of 

reporting entity

A reporting entity must be 

a “distinct entity under US, 

state or local Law.” The 

reporting entity is expected 

to be the entity with financial 

control of the forest.

The reporting entity is an 

“individual, corporation or other 

legally constituted body, a city or 

county government agency that owns 

at least 100 acres of trees.”

The program deals with forest 

projects and not with entities. A 

forest project is a planned set of 

activities to remove, reduce, or 

prevent CO2

 emissions through carbon 

sequestration in forests. The project 

may apply to be a geographic subset 

of forest controlled by an entity or the 

entire forest area.

Forestry 

cooperatives 

recognized

Not specified The program does not recognize 

forest cooperatives as entities.

The program does not recognize forest 

cooperatives as entities.

Future regulatory 

promises

None California promises that registrants 

will receive consideration in any 

future GHG regulatory program.

California promises that registrants 

will receive consideration in any 

future GHG regulatory program.

continued

Appendix A

Comparison of Carbon Registries, Forestry Sector
16

Program

Federal 1605(b)

program

California Forestry Sector 

Protocol, entity reporting

California Forestry Project 

Protocol, project certification

Compatibility 

with other carbon 

programs

At this point 1605(b) 

requirements alone would 

not be enough for acceptance 

by the California Registry, 

CCX, or the Kyoto 

Protocol’s CDM. 

An entity registered with the 

California Registry would be 

qualified for registry with 1605(b) 

and CCX. The Kyoto CDM 

deals with projects, not entities. 

Requirements of other State 

registries now under development 

are unlikely to be stricter than those 

of the California Registry.

A forestry project that would meet 

California’s registry requirements 

would also meet the requirements of 

1605(b) and the CCX. CDM projects 

must be in developing countries. Other 

State registries now under development 

will likely have less strict requirements 

than the California Forestry Project 

Protocols.

National and 

international 

emissions

International reductions can be 

registered, but they must be in 

addition to and separate from 

domestic emissions.

National reporting is optional. Only 

California emissions are certifiable; 

international emissions and 

reductions are not accepted.

Forest projects must be in California.

Ownership

Ownership of 

carbon vs. land 

ownership

The program does not 

specify ownership, but the 

landowner always gets the 

reporting credit, even if a 

third party was involved. 

The owner of the trees has the 

reporting responsibility. The program 

does not deal directly with the 

question of carbon ownership vs. 

land ownership. 

The owner of the trees has the 

reporting responsibility. The program 

does not deal directly with the 

question of carbon ownership vs. land 

ownership. 

Ownership of dead 

carbon

Not specified NA (see above) NA (see above)

Ownership of live 

carbon

Not specified NA (see above) NA (see above)

Liability

Liability (who 

is responsible if 

project fails to 

sequester carbon)

The program does not 

address this issue.

The owner of the trees is responsible 

for accounting/reporting change in 

carbon stocks.

The owner of the trees is responsible 

for accounting/reporting change in 

carbon stocks.

Natural disturbance Emissions resulting from 

natural disturbance are not 

required to be reported, but 

if not reported, any regrowth 

resulting from disturbance will 

not count toward sequestration 

registered.

The baseline must be updated if 

natural disturbance has a cumulative 

effect of more than a 10-percent 

change in carbon stocks.

If a significant natural disturbance 

or unplanned harvest occurs (one 

that affects at least 20 percent of the 

project total carbon stock), then the 

affected area must be directly sampled 

within 3 years.

Types of Forest Carbon

Carbon pools 

required

The program does not 

specify this but recommends 

the inclusion of living tree 

biomass always and soil for 

reforestation efforts.

The program specifies that living 

tree biomass, standing dead biomass, 

and lying deadwood pools are to be 

included.

The program specifies that living 

tree biomass, standing dead biomass, 

and lying deadwood pools are to be 

included.

continued
17

Program

Federal 1605(b)

program

California Forestry Sector 

Protocol, entity reporting

California Forestry Project 

Protocol, project certification

Carbon pools 

voluntary

Herbaceous vegetation, 

litter, deadwood, and wood 

products are recommended 

to optional, depending on the 

type of forestry activity.

Shrubs and herbaceous understory, 

litter, soil, and wood products may 

be included.

Shrubs and herbaceous understory, 

litter, soil, and wood products may be 

included.

Offsite carbon

 Wood products Wood products are 

recognized as a carbon sink.

Reporting of wood products is 

optional. If wood products are 

reported, this does not confer 

ownership (as this is considered 

beyond the scope of the registry). 

There is a weight deduction for mill 

inefficiencies (keep 60 percent). The 

harvested wood pool is reported on a 

declining scale until it is discounted 

to zero.

Reporting of wood products is 

optional. If reported, the wood 

products component is not currently 

certified. There is a weight deduction 

for mill inefficiencies (keep 60 

percent). The harvested wood pool is 

reported on a declining scale until it is 

discounted to zero.

 Biomass energy Biofuels are considered 

separately in the nonforest 

emissions sector of the 

registry.

Biofuels are accounted for in general 

energy use protocols.

Tree removal for biomass energy is 

not currently considered in the FPP. 

Measurement Methodology

Calculation/

estimation methods 

(or metrics and data 

protocols)

A stock change accounting 

approach is employed. 

Certain estimation models 

such as COLE are approved 

for use.

A stock change accounting approach 

is employed. Example allometric 

equations are provided but others may 

be certified. Certain empirically based 

models are accepted where direct 

sampling is not required in off years.

Same as for forest sector protocol. 

Sampling and/or 

monitoring methods

No specific sampling 

methods are required.

A sampling methodology is required; 

list of minimum required sampling 

criteria found in table 1.1 of forestry 

sector protocol.

A sampling methodology is required; 

list of minimum required sampling 

criteria found in table 1.1 of forestry 

sector protocol.

Accuracy/quality 

control standards

Estimation methods are rated 

A to D on the basis of their 

accuracy. Carbon estimates 

cannot be registered officially 

unless they are obtained by 

methods whose accuracy 

averages at least B. Level 

B requires modification of 

look-up tables to specific site 

conditions; Forest Service 

regional look-up tables are 

classified as level C.

For sampling, the standard error 

cannot exceed 20 percent of the 

mean estimate.

The sampling error at the 90-

percent confidence interval must be 

<20 percent of the mean estimate. 

Deductions are applied to the mean 

carbon estimate if the 90 percent 

confidence interval is ≥5 percent of 

the mean.

Exclusions There is a de minimus 

provision of up to 3 percent 

of total emissions.

No de minimus provision. No de minimus provision.

continued
18

Program

Federal 1605(b)

program

California Forestry Sector 

Protocol, entity reporting

California Forestry Project 

Protocol, project certification

Reporting

Reporting frequency 

(testing, monitoring, 

certification)

Annual reporting is required. 

Reports must be submitted 

by July 1 for emissions 

occurring during the 

previous calendar year.

Registrants must submit annual 

monitoring reports (Annex C of 

forestry sector protocol). A complete 

forest inventory is required every 10 

years.

Registrants must submit annual 

monitoring reports. Third-party 

certification is required every 5 

years. A complete forest inventory is 

required every 10 years.

Certification

Third-party 

certification

Third-party certification 

is recommended but not 

required.

Third-party certification required 

(biological data must be certified 

every 5 years). A forest certification 

protocol is available.

Third-party certification is required. 

A certification checklist is available 

(page 69 of the forestry project 

protocol).

Forest Activities Accepted

Forest activities 

recognized

Reforestation, conservation, 

and various forest 

management techniques are 

eligible for registration under 

1605(b).

The program deals with all changes 

in an entity’s carbon stocks.

Forests projects must fall into one of 

three categories: (1) conservationbased forest management (where 

management promotes native forests 

of trees of multiple ages and mixed 

species), (2) reforestation (of land 

that has been out of forest cover 

for a minimum of 10 years), or (3) 

conservation.

Forest type allowed 

(native, etc.)

Not specified. Not specified. Forest projects must promote native 

forests.

Required and/or 

suggested forest 

management 

practices

No specific practices are 

required.

No specific forest practices are 

required.

See forest activities recognized above.

Baseline and Additionality 

Additionality The program does not 

address this issue.

GHG reductions must follow the 

forest project protocols, and these 

address additionality. See forestry 

project protocol column.

Sequestration gains must be in addition 

to gains that would have occurred under 

projected management practices and in 

addition to what is required by existing 

law. Calculation of additionality is tied 

to baseline projections.

continued
19

Program

Federal 1605(b)

program

California Forestry Sector 

Protocol, entity reporting

California Forestry Project 

Protocol, project certification

Baseline A base period of 1 to 4 years 

is required then reductions 

are counted against this. 

Registered reductions can 

start 2003.

A forecasted baseline is optional, but 

highly recommended (especially if a 

project will be done). The forecasted 

baseline is a projection of an entity’s 

forest carbon stocks over 100 

years based on entity’s forecasted 

management practices, starting in 

1990 or later (after 2008 the start 

date must be some subsequent year).

A forecasted baseline required. The 

forecasted baseline is a projection of 

an entity’s forest carbon stocks based 

on the entity’s forecasted management 

practices, projected over the project’s 

duration. The projection period may 

start in 1990 or later (after 2008 the 

start date must be some subsequent 

year). Conservation projects must use 

a baseline based on future land use 

projections. Reforestation is based on 

previous practices that have kept the 

project out of forest cover.

Permanence

Permanence There are no permanence 

requirements.

Permanence is dealt with in the 

California Forestry Project Protocol.

Forests must be secured with 

permanent easements.

Crediting period, 

e.g., length of time 

carbon credits from 

registry are valid

The program does address 

this issue.

The registry does not issue credits. The registry does not issue credits.

Leakage

Leakage Small emitters must certify 

that none of the reductions 

reported are likely to cause 

increases in emissions 

elsewhere in the entity’s 

operation. Larger emitters 

must report emissions for the 

entire entity operation, so 

leakage is captured.

Onsite leakage analysis and entity 

level reporting are required for 

projects being conducted per the 

forestry project protocol.

An entity must quantify any leakage 

within the entity’s boundaries. It 

must also assess leakage outside its 

boundaries and downstream, i.e., 

indirect effects, as where reforestation 

uses equipment that uses fossil 

fuels, but such leakage need not 

be quantified. Reporting of market 

leakage is optional but strongly 

advised and may be required in the 

future.

Program Georgia

Maine (in association with Northeast 

Regional Greenhouse Gas Registry)

Oregon (Department of 

Forestry)

Governance

Web site http://www.gatrees.

org/ForestMarketing/

CarbonSequestration.cfm

http://maineghg.raabassociates.org/

finalplan.asp http://www.rggr.us/

http://egov.oregon.gov/ODF/

PRIVATE_FORESTS/carbon.shtml

Legal basis Georgia Carbon 

Sequestration Registry Act 

(SB356 2004)

Maine law PL 237 (2003) directs 

Maine Department of Environmental 

Protection to create a climate action 

plan for the State.

Oregon law HB2200 (2001) for 

forestry offsets

continued
20

Program Georgia

Maine (in association with Northeast 

Regional Greenhouse Gas Registry)

Oregon (Department of 

Forestry)

Purpose The law is designed to create 

an automated, electronic, 

voluntary registry for 

offsetting GHG emissions 

via carbon sequestration 

and to increase the value of 

privately owned forests.

The Maine Climate Action Plan 

proposes measures to cut GHG 

emissions to 10 percent below 1990 

levels by 2020 and mandates an 

inventory of state-wide emissions 

and the creation of a GHG registry.

HB2200 authorizes the State forester 

to aggregate and market carbon 

offsets from forestry projects on State 

and private land and calls for creation 

of a forestry offset accounting system.

Current status The registry is still under 

development.

The RGGR is currently in 

development and should be completed 

in 2006. The RGGR will not contain 

specific guidelines for the forestry 

sector. Instead, the RGGR is to defer 

to the development of offset protocols 

by the RGGI, a cooperative agreement 

by Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic 

States to reduce GHG emissions. 

Concurrently, the Forest Service has 

awarded a grant to the Pinchot Institute 

to work with Maine, Pennsylvania, 

and Wisconsin to develop regional 

protocols, with the intention that these 

protocols will be applied to State and 

regional registries in the Northeast. 

Development of the registry is more 

or less on hold until the Oregon 

Department of Forestry feels there 

is more market potential for forestry 

offset projects.

Voluntary or 

required

Voluntary The registry is voluntary, but the State is 

required to complete a GHG inventory.

The program relates to voluntary 

forestry projects.

Registry 

management/

State agency 

responsibilities

A Web-based registration 

system will be administered 

by the Georgia Superior 

Court Clerks’ Cooperative 

Authority. The Georgia 

Forestry Commission will 

be responsible for all other 

aspects of the registry.

The State registry is being developed 

through a regional effort with 

NESCAUM. A forestry protocol 

is in development with Wisconsin 

and Pennsylvania through a Pinchot 

Institute research project.

Oregon Department of Forestry 

is charged with responsibility for 

developing a forestry accounting 

system, but this work is currently on 

hold.

Definition of 

reporting entity

The reporting entity may be 

a natural person or a legal 

entity in its entirety.

This is not yet settled. The reporting entity must be a nonFederal forest landowner.

Forestry 

cooperatives 

recognized

The program is expected to 

recognize cooperatives of 

forest landowners.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled.

Future regulatory 

promises

Registrants will get a seat at 

the table in designing any 

future regulatory program.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled. No information 

available.

Compatibility 

with other carbon 

programs

Standards have not been 

established yet, so it is too 

soon to tell.

Standards are not fully established, 

but the RGGR will be compatible 

with the WRI/WBCSD GHG 

protocol.

Standards are not fully established, 

but the RGGR will be compatible with 

the WRI/WBCSD GHG protocol.

continued
21

Program Georgia

Maine (in association with Northeast 

Regional Greenhouse Gas Registry)

Oregon (Department of 

Forestry)

National and 

international 

emissions

Georgia’s registry is 

terrestrial based and will 

record carbon sequestration. 

Georgia currently has no 

statute regulating carbon 

emissions.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled. No information 

available.

Ownership

Ownership of 

carbon vs. land 

ownership

Ownership of carbon is 

not tied permanently to 

ownership of land.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

Ownership of carbon can be transferred 

to those who financed the project. 

Thus, the Oregon Department of 

Forestry can obtain rights to carbon 

credits if the State financed the forest 

project.

Ownership of dead 

carbon

Registry will track 

ownership, but specifics are 

in development.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled.

Ownership of live 

carbon

Registry will track 

ownership, but specifics are 

in development.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled.

Liability

Liability (who 

is responsible if 

project fails to 

sequester carbon)

Private contracts are expected 

to regulate this. The registry 

will record carbon sequestration 

and expected sequestration. 

If a project fails to achieve 

the projected sequestration, 

the registry will reflect this. 

However, the registry will not 

establish contracts regarding 

carbon trading.

This has not been settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled.

Natural disturbance See comment above. This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled.

Types of Forest Carbon

Carbon pools 

required

Aboveground tree biomass This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled.

Carbon pools 

voluntary

Soil carbon, belowground live 

biomass, and forest products.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled.

continued
22

Program Georgia

Maine (in association with Northeast 

Regional Greenhouse Gas Registry)

Oregon (Department of 

Forestry)

Offsite carbon

 Wood products Harvested timber can count 

as a sink, but details have 

not yet been arranged.

Specifics are in development. 

However, recommended guidelines for 

the Climate Action Plan include use 

of wood products, and Maine research 

found sequestration potential in woodproduct substitution, e.g., using wood 

in place of concrete. Future registry 

development is likely to include 

provisions for wood products.

HB2200 requires an accounting 

system to account for emission debits 

and credits “based on the end product 

use of harvested biomass.” Specifics 

of wood-product accounting have not 

been developed yet.

 Biomass energy A policy on biomass energy 

is in development.

The use of biomass energy to reduce 

GHGs is encouraged in the Maine 

Climate Action Plan, but the registry 

is still in development.

This is not yet established, but the 

Oregon Department of Forestry 

is funding research to establish 

accounting principles for handling 

forest biofuels as carbon offsets.

Measurement Methodology

Calculation/

estimation methods 

(or metrics and data 

protocols)

Protocols will include lookup tables for aboveground 

tree biomass based on 

specific forest type. Protocols 

for soils and belowground 

biomass are in development.

Maine has done a lot of research on 

forest carbon measurements, but 

specific registry guidelines have not 

been developed yet.

This is not yet settled.

Sampling and/or 

monitoring methods

Specific forest sampling 

schemes are required based 

on forest type and age.

Maine has done a lot of research on 

forest carbon measurements, but 

specific registry guidelines have not 

been developed yet.

This is not yet settled.

Accuracy/quality 

control standards

The program is expected 

to require third-party 

certification (with third 

parties trained by GFC) 

of all registered carbon 

sequestration. It is expected 

that the GFC will monitor 

10 percent of areas each 

year and audit 5 percent of 

practices each year.

This is not yet settled. This is not yet settled.

Exclusions This is not yet settled. This is not yet settled. This is not yet settled.

Reporting

Reporting frequency 

(testing, monitoring, 

and certification)

The statute requires annual 

reporting.

This is not yet settled. This is not yet settled.

continued
23

Program Georgia

Maine (in association with Northeast 

Regional Greenhouse Gas Registry)

Oregon (Department of 

Forestry)

Certification

Third-party 

certification

Third-party certification is 

required.

This is not yet settled. The statute encourages third-party 

certification.

Forest Activities Accepted

Forest activities 

recognized

The program accepts 

afforestation, reforestation, 

forest management, and 

restricted (protected) forests.

Registry guidelines are still in 

development, but the existing Maine 

Climate Action Plan proposes many 

sequestration projects involving 

forest management techniques in the 

industrial forest sector.

This is not yet settled, but Oregon is 

currently funding research on how to 

include the use of forest biofuels and 

reduction of fire risk as quantifiable 

carbon sequestration projects.

Forest type allowed 

(native, etc.)

Forests must be composed 

of one or more tree species 

identified as native to 

Georgia in Bishop’s Native 

Trees of Georgia.

This is not yet settled. At present, there is no requirement 

that forests be composed of native 

species.

Required and/or 

suggested forest 

management 

practices

Forest activities must meet 

or exceed Georgia Best 

Management Practices.

This is not yet settled. Projects with unsustainable, long-term 

consequences for the Oregon economy 

or environment are not accepted, but 

specifics of this have not been developed 

yet.

Baseline and Additionality

Additionality There will be two alternative 

reporting methods for forest 

management practices, 

including reforestation. One 

will consider additionality; 

the other will not. Carbon 

will be registered separately 

for each approach.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

The statute states that offsets will 

be in addition to those that would 

result from practices required by the 

Oregon Forest Practices Act. The 

State forester must judge that a project 

“would not occur in the absence of the 

[offset] agreement.”

Baseline Any year from 1990 on 

can count as a baseline. 

Appropriate measurement 

protocols must be followed 

for baseline year to qualify.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled.

Permanence

Permanence Restricted (protected) 

forest practices will require 

conservation easements. 

Other practices will not have 

easement requirements. 

A project length will be 

specified for each project.

This is not yet settled, but 

permanence requirements of 

the registry are likely to be 

accommodating to industrial forests.

This is not yet settled, but the 

statute states that offsets “account 

for the duration and permanence 

of the carbon storage or emission 

reductions.”

continued
24

Program Georgia

Maine (in association with Northeast 

Regional Greenhouse Gas Registry)

Oregon (Department of 

Forestry)

Crediting period, 

e.g., length of time 

carbon credits from 

registry are valid

This not yet settled, but the 

statute states that “carbon 

sequestration results shall 

reflect the amount of time 

that net carbon gains are 

stored.” A project length will 

be specified for each project.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled, but the 

statute states that offsets “account 

for the duration and permanence 

of the carbon storage or emission 

reductions.”

Leakage

Leakage Leakage will not be 

considered in afforestation 

and forest management 

practices.

This is not yet settled. No 

information available.

This is not yet settled.

Program Climate Trust

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Commercial Forestry Sector

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Exchange Forestry Offsets

Governance

Web site http://www.climatetrust.org http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/ http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/

Legal basis Oregon law HB3283 (1997) 

requires GHG reductions. The 

CT (a nonprofit organization) is 

authorized as an offset provider.

The basis is a voluntary, legally 

binding agreement between 

interested parties.

The basis is a voluntary, legally 

binding agreement between interested 

parties.

Purpose HB3283 requires new 

utilities to comply with 

0.675 pounds of CO2

per kilowatt hour GHG 

performance standard. All 

utilities have chosen to 

meet the regulation through 

carbon offset projects 

mediated by the nonprofit 

CT, which issues RFPs for 

project proposals.

This is a voluntary pilot GHG capand-trade program. Participants made 

a legally binding agreement to reduce 

emissions to 4 percent below the 1998 

to 2001 average by 2006. Under CCX 

phase II, members are committed to 

entity-wide emission reductions of 

6 percent below baseline by the end 

of 2010. Commercial forestry sector 

protocols provide definitions and rules 

for quantifying and reporting changes 

in carbon stocks for the commercial 

forestry sector. 

This is a voluntary pilot GHG capand-trade program. Participants made 

a legally binding agreement to reduce 

emissions to 4 percent below the 1998 

to 2001 average by 2006. Under CCX 

phase II, members are committed to 

entity-wide emission reductions of 6 

percent below baseline by the end of 

2010. Offset protocols create criteria 

for CCX offsets, which members 

can use to meet GHG reduction 

requirements.

Current status The CT is currently 

implementing projects for 

utilities within and increasingly 

outside of the Oregon program. 

The current offset portfolio 

includes a number of forestry 

projects; in order to diversify 

the portfolio, the CT has set 

a goal of limiting forestry 

projects to not more than 25 

percent of future offset projects.

Some CCX guidelines are still being 

developed, but the market is up and 

running.

Some CCX guidelines are still being 

developed, but the market is up and 

running.

continued
25

Program Climate Trust

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Commercial Forestry Sector

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Exchange Forestry Offsets

Voluntary or 

required

Both mandatory and 

voluntary participants reduce 

emissions through the CT’s 

offset portfolio. 

This is a voluntary cap-and-trade 

program; those who join agree to 

reduce GHG emissions.

This is a voluntary cap-and-trade 

program; those who join agree to 

reduce GHG emissions.

Registry 

management/

State agency 

responsibilities

The CT funds and reviews 

offset projects. Projects are 

evaluated in two phases and 

then a contract is agreed 

upon in the third phase.

The CCX has staff and advisors 

who prepare and administer CCX 

guidelines.

The CCX has staff and advisors 

who prepare and administer CCX 

guidelines.

Definition of 

reporting entity

Project sponsors submit a 

project proposal in response 

to a CT RFP. Accepted 

projects then become the 

reporting entities.

Entities can be members 

(corporations or organizations that 

directly emit GHGs) or associate 

members (smaller organizations with 

little to no direct emissions).

Exchange offsets (of which forestry 

offsets are one type) are planned 

reductions in GHG emissions and/or 

increases in GHG sequestration. These 

offsets can be registered by CCX 

members, CCX-registered aggregators, 

or by CCX project owners if projects 

meet minimum size requirements.

Forestry 

cooperatives 

recognized

Yes No. The registry deals only with 

commercial forestry companies.

Forestry cooperatives will be 

recognized for forestry projects in 

the future. The CCX currently uses 

cooperative-type aggregators for 

farming sequestration projects.

Future regulatory 

promises

The CT has been cited in 

many regulatory proceedings 

and is a member of CCAR. 

CT offsets may be accredited 

in future State and/or 

federally regulated systems.

None None

Compatibility 

with other carbon 

programs

CT has worked with the 

State of Massachusetts and a 

utility in Montana to provide 

offsets. Additionally, 

Washington has passed 

legislation compatible with 

the Oregon law.

The CCX Forest Project rules are 

consistent with the Kyoto Protocol. 

The CCX accepts a range of 

professionally accepted calculation 

methods. 

The CCX Forest Project rules are 

consistent with the Kyoto Protocol. 

The CCX accepts a range of 

professionally accepted calculation 

methods.

National and 

international 

emissions

Projects may be in Oregon, 

elsewhere in the United 

States, or outside the United 

States, with preference 

given to Oregon projects. 

International projects usually 

have a U.S. partner.

The program recognizes emissions 

and offsets in the United States, 

Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.

The program recognizes emissions 

and offsets in the United States, 

Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.

continued
26

Program Climate Trust

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Commercial Forestry Sector

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Exchange Forestry Offsets

Ownership

Ownership of 

carbon vs. land 

ownership

The CT funds an offset 

project initially. The carbon 

stored through the project is 

then owned by the CT. In the 

Oregon Power Plant Offset 

Program, the CT retires the 

offset credits in perpetuity. In 

the Large Emitter Program, 

offsets are transferred to the 

emitter, who owns them as a 

corporate asset. 

The landowner retains the rights to 

all nonincluded carbon pools, i.e., 

branches, roots, litter, and soil.

The landowner retains the rights to 

all nonincluded carbon pools, i.e., 

belowground biomass, litter, and soil.

Ownership of dead 

carbon

NA Only carbon in the main tree stem 

is registered with the CCX; the 

member retains ownership of all 

remaining carbon (including dead 

material). 

The landowner retains ownership of 

all nonincluded carbon pools, i.e., 

belowground biomass, litter, and soil.

Ownership of live 

carbon

NA Only carbon in the main tree stem 

is registered with the CCX; the 

member retains ownership of all 

remaining carbon (including dead 

material). 

The landowner retains ownership of 

all nonincluded carbon pools, i.e., 

belowground biomass, litter, and soil.

Liability

Liability (who 

is responsible if 

project fails to 

sequester carbon)

A third party verifies the 

carbon delivery. Generally 

if carbon is not delivered, 

additional funding is stopped 

and penalties may be 

assessed.

The program provides for creation of 

a carbon reserve pool consisting of 

carbon financial instruments. These 

instruments are to be released to 

owners in 2006 if they are not required 

to cover carbon reductions or losses.

The program provides for creation 

of a 20-percent reserve pool. The 

reserves are to be released to owners 

in 2006 if they are not required to 

cover carbon reductions or losses.

Natural disturbance Liability varies depending on 

specific contracts. Generally, 

areas affected by natural 

disturbances that occur in 

early years must be replanted.

Members must make up for losses 

due to natural disturbance by 

surrendering a portion of the reserve 

pool.

Members must make up for losses due 

to natural disturbance by surrendering 

a portion of the reserve pool. 

Types of Forest Carbon

Carbon pools 

required

This is project specific. Wood in the main stem of the tree up 

to the terminal bud

Aboveground living biomass

Carbon pools 

voluntary

This is project specific. Carbon in tree roots, leaves, 

branches, and soil is not counted. 

Belowground biomass, litter, and soil 

carbon may be included in the future

continued
27

Program Climate Trust

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Commercial Forestry Sector

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Exchange Forestry Offsets

Offsite carbon

 Wood products These may be determined to 

be eligible in the future, but 

they are not included at this 

point.

Not included at this point. Not included at this point.

 Biomass energy This may be determined to 

be eligible in the future, but 

it is not included at this point. 

Not included at this point. Not included at this point.

Measurement Methodology

Calculation/

estimation methods 

(or metrics and data 

protocols)

These are not specified. 

Rather, project proposals 

are evaluated based on their 

monitoring and verification 

plan. General guidelines are 

provided in the 2005 RFP.

The program accepts two general 

approaches: (1) a carbon-stable 

accounting approach in which 

a company certifies that forests 

are sustainably managed and that 

carbon stocks will not decrease 

during the CCX trial period or (2) a 

model-based accounting approach 

that employs proprietary timber 

inventory techniques or publicly 

available growth-and-yield models.

Participants must use a combination 

of standard growth coefficients, 

direct infield sampling, and/or direct 

measurement performed by independent 

verifiers. Different methods are required 

for small, medium, and large forestation 

projects. The CCX also plans to 

harmonize offset calculation methods 

with calculation methods employed in 

the commercial forestry sector.

Sampling and/or 

monitoring methods

There are no specific 

requirements; instead, project 

proposals are evaluated based 

on their monitoring and 

verification plan.

Each entity must have a sampling 

protocol; there are no other 

specific requirements as long as 

overall calculation methods are 

professionally accepted.

Direct measurement or sampling is 

required only for large projects (those 

involving more than 12 500 mt of CO2

per year).

Accuracy/quality 

control standards

Third-party verification 

of measurements made 

under the monitoring and 

verification plans is required.

Any carbon estimate models used 

must be approved by CCX, available 

for audit, and available to the public 

to ensure transparency. If a model is 

used, the member must submit a report 

detailing the model’s quantification 

methods and procedures. Increases 

in carbon stocks will be discounted 

to account for statistical variance 

associated with the calculation methods 

used.

All results are subject to inspection.

Exclusions Information not obtained on 

this subject for this report.

De minimus exclusions allowed 

varies by entity size.

Information not obtained on this 

subject for this report.

continued
28

Program Climate Trust

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Commercial Forestry Sector

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Exchange Forestry Offsets

Reporting

Reporting frequency 

(testing, monitoring, 

and certification)

This is not specified. However, 

project proposals must outline 

how and when reporting will 

occur and CT evaluates this 

information when considering 

project proposals. Projectspecific monitoring and 

verification plans are developed 

with each project. Project 

implementation must begin 

within 3 years once funding is 

awarded.

Annual reporting and an annual audit 

are required. If the member uses 

both proprietary timber inventory 

techniques and publicly available 

growth-and-yield models, then a 

report must be provided for each 

method. An initial report in 2003 and 

final report at end of the pilot market 

period are required also.

If an aggregator is involved, each 

project owner must submit a report 

to the aggregator, and the aggregator 

submits a summary report of the 

whole project to CCX. If there is no 

aggregator, each project owner or 

CCX member submits a report to 

CCX directly. Each project owner 

must submit an annual attestation 

that it is in conformance with CCX 

requirements.

Certification

Third-party 

certification

Each project must be 

certified by a third party that 

has no financial interest in it.

Changes in carbon stocks must 

be certified by independent CCXapproved verifiers.

Each project’s results must be certified 

by an independent CCX-approved 

verifier.

Forest Activities Accepted

Forest activities 

recognized

CT recognizes projects 

in forest preservation, 

reforestation, afforestation, 

and forest management 

practices.

The program is not restricted to a 

specific forest activity; it applies 

to any changes in members’ forest 

carbon stocks.

Forest projects can include 

reforestation and afforestation 

projects. For certain areas of Brazil 

and Mexico, projects in avoided 

deforestation are eligible if there is 

an accompanying afforestation or 

reforestation component.

Forest type allowed 

(native, etc.)

Only native forest projects 

have been funded.

No specific requirements. Management of native species is 

encouraged for sequestration projects. 

Required and/or 

suggested forest 

management 

practices

Preference is given to 

projects with environmental, 

health, and/or socioeconomic 

cobenefits.

Members must demonstrate that 

forest holdings are managed 

sustainably. CCX accepts standard 

certification protocols.

Project owners must demonstrate 

that forest holdings are managed 

sustainably, and long-term carbon 

storage must be encouraged. CCX 

accepts standard certification protocols.

Baseline and Additionality

Additionality Offset projects are funded by 

CT only when sequestration 

activities would not have 

occurred in absence of project 

funding and sequestration 

gains are above and beyond 

what is required by law. 

Projects must not have begun 

before funding was awarded. 

Proof of additionality is 

evaluated by review board on 

a case-by-case basis.

Additionality is not addressed 

specifically. No moving baseline is 

required; a stock exchange approach 

is employed.

Additionality is not addressed 

for forestation projects. Avoided 

deforestation must be in addition to 

the projected regional preservation 

trends.

continued
29

Program Climate Trust

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Commercial Forestry Sector

Chicago Climate Exchange, 

Exchange Forestry Offsets

Baseline A “without project” dynamic 

baseline is required. This 

baseline projects carbon 

storage expected in the 

absence of the project. The 

project report must describe 

the assumptions and methods 

used to create this baseline.

Members must submit initial reports 

that estimate total carbon stocks on 

January 1, 2003. These estimates 

serve as carbon baselines.

Forestation projects must document the 

carbon stocks present when the projects 

start. Large forestation projects must 

quantify baseline levels through direct 

measurement by a CCX-approved 

verifier. For avoided deforestation, the 

regional deforestation rate is used to 

calculate the baseline—the amount of 

deforestation that would have occurred 

without the project.

Permanence

Permanence Project sponsors are required 

to sign an agreement that 

ensures delivery of carbon 

credits in the amount and 

duration specified in the 

project proposal. Conservation 

easements are preferred but 

permanent easements are not 

required.

During a pilot marked period, 

members agree to respect the 

principle of permanence, excluding 

catastrophic events and land sales, 

and to maintain beyond 2006 the 

quantity of carbon stocks maintained 

during the pilot period. If land is sold 

or gained, then members adjust their 

level of carbon stocks accordingly.

Forest projects must have long-term 

carbon storage as a primary purpose. 

Projects qualify if there is a long-term 

conservation easement, transfer of 

ownership to a land trust, or under 

other circumstance the CCZ finds 

acceptable.

Crediting period, 

e.g., length of time 

carbon credits from 

registry are valid

Project specific This is not addressed specifically, but 

the CCX will complete the current 

GHG reduction round in 2010 

(adjusted from original 2006)

This is not addressed specifically, but 

the CCX will complete the current 

GHG reduction round in 2010 

(adjusted from original 2006).

Leakage

Leakage Proposals must describe how 

the project will minimize 

leakage and adjust carbon 

storage estimates to account 

for leakage.

Leakage within entity boundaries 

must be accounted for.

Information not obtained on this 

subject for this report.

Program

Kyoto Protocol, 

Clean Development 

Mechanism

Intergovernmental Panel on 

Climate Change and Land Use, 

Land-Use Change and Forestry

World Resources Institute/World 

Business Council for Sustainable 

Development Project Protocol

Governance

Web site http://cdm.unfccc.int/ http://unfccc.int/methods_and_

science/lulucf/items/1084.php

http://www.ghgprotocol.org/

Legal basis The basis is an international, 

legally binding agreement 

between nations who agreed 

to sign the protocol. 

The basis is a set of voluntary 

guidelines developed by the IPCC. 

The basis is a voluntary protocol for 

GHG reduction projects developed 

by the WRI and the WBCSD, two 

nonprofits.

continued
30

Program

Kyoto Protocol, 

Clean Development 

Mechanism

Intergovernmental Panel on 

Climate Change and Land Use, 

Land-Use Change and Forestry

World Resources Institute/

World Business Council for 

Sustainable Development 

Project Protocol

Purpose Annex 1 (developed) 

countries are to reduce GHG 

emissions by ~5 percent 

below 1990 levels by 

2008–12. Annex 1 countries 

can offset 1 percent of their 

base-year emissions through 

sequestration activities 

(authorized through CDMs). 

Also, a CDM registry is to be 

developed and maintained and 

publicly available database of 

CDM projects is to be created.

To establish “good practice 

guidance” for estimating carbon 

emissions and sequestration for 

land use, land use change, and 

forestry activities. The program is 

designed for creating national GHG 

inventories and does not establish a 

registry.

To establish internationally accepted 

accounting and reporting standards 

for GHG emission reduction or 

sequestration projects. The Project 

Protocol follows the WRI/WBCSD 

GHG Protocol, which created 

standards for emission reporting.

Current status The CDM registration 

process is up and running 

but no forestry projects 

have been approved as of 

October 2005, and no forestry 

methodologies have been 

approved by executive board.

LULUCF guidelines were issued in 

2003.

The Project Protocol was made public 

in December 2005; sector-specific 

protocols (which will include a 

protocol for the forestry sector) will 

be issued in 2006.

Voluntary or 

required

It is a cap-and-trade 

program.

Voluntary Voluntary 

Registry 

management/

State agency 

responsibilities

The CDM Executive Board 

is the official administrative 

body. Members are elected 

every 2 years by the Kyoto 

Conference of the Parties.

Guidelines are issued by the IPCC 

and interested parties can follow 

them if they wish.

Guidelines are issued by the WRI/

WBCSD and interested parties can 

follow them if they wish.

Definition of 

reporting entity

The program is applied on a 

project basis. A “project” is 

a planned set of activities for 

reducing carbon emissions 

through afforestation or 

reforestation. CDMs must take 

place in nonannex 1 countries 

that are parties to the Kyoto 

protocol. A “purchasing” 

country must have a national 

GHG inventory in place.

NA A project is any activity or group of 

activities designed to reduce GHG 

emission levels or increase GHG 

removal from the atmosphere, e.g., 

through terrestrial sequestration. 

An entity that wants to quantify 

GHG reductions at the corporate 

or entity-wide level should use the 

WRI/WBCSD Corporate Accounting 

Standard. 

Forestry 

cooperatives 

recognized?

Not yet specified NA The program has not addressed this 

question. The question may not 

be addressed until land use sector 

protocols are developed.

Future regulatory 

promises

If approved, a CDM 

counts as an offset to GHG 

emissions for the annex 1 

country or company that 

financed the CDM.

NA NA

continued
31

Program

Kyoto Protocol, 

Clean Development 

Mechanism

Intergovernmental Panel on 

Climate Change and Land Use, 

Land-Use Change and Forestry

World Resources Institute/World 

Business Council for Sustainable 

Development Project Protocol

Compatibility 

with other carbon 

programs

CDM must be located in 

developing countries, so 

direct compatibility with 

U.S. registries isn’t possible. 

However, guidelines for 

CDM forest methodologies 

(when these are fully 

developed) will likely be 

stricter than those for any 

other registry.

LULUCF is widely recognized but 

it may be too general to transfer to 

actual carbon registries. This subject 

requires further investigation not 

covered in this report.

The program meets Kyoto CDM 

requirements in principle (the Project 

Protocol Web site compares key 

concepts of both systems).

National and 

international 

emissions

Sequestration projects 

must occur in developing 

countries participating in the 

Kyoto Protocol.

Inventory methods would be 

applicable to both.

The program is an international 

accord and works with both national 

and international projects.

Ownership

Ownership of 

carbon vs. land 

ownership

Carbon ownership moves 

with CDM projects.

NA NA

Ownership of dead 

carbon

The program does not deal 

with wood products.

NA NA

Ownership of live 

carbon

Live carbon belongs to the 

project host until the CDM is 

registered and purchased by 

an annex I entity.

NA NA

Liability

Liability (who 

is responsible if 

project fails to 

sequester carbon)

Information not obtained on 

this subject for this report.

The program does not deal with 

project level reporting.

Information not obtained on this 

subject for this report.

Natural disturbance No specific forest 

methodologies have been 

adopted yet.

Information not obtained on this 

subject for this report.

Information not obtained on this 

subject for this report.

Types of Forest Carbon

Carbon pools 

required

If a project shows that certain 

carbon pools will not contribute 

to increased emissions, then 

these pools need not be 

measured. All other carbon 

pools must be measured.

Aboveground living biomass and 

organic soil are required for all 

tiers. For tiers 2 and 3, belowground 

biomass, dead woody biomass, litter, 

and mineral soil must be calculated 

also.

The program has not addressed this 

point specifically; the point will be 

discussed in the 2006 land use sector 

protocols.

continued
32

Program

Kyoto Protocol, 

Clean Development 

Mechanism

Intergovernmental Panel on 

Climate Change and Land Use, 

Land-Use Change and Forestry

World Resources Institute/World 

Business Council for Sustainable 

Development Project Protocol

Carbon pools 

voluntary

Those that will not contribute 

significantly to increases in 

emissions may be reported. 

(Unable to find for this report the 

specific numbers for what counts 

as a significant emission.)

For tier 1, voluntary pools are 

belowground biomass, dead woody 

biomass, litter, and mineral soil (unless 

the land in question was previously 

unforested, in which case calculation 

of mineral soil carbon is required).

The program has not addressed this 

point specifically; the point will be 

discussed in the 2006 land use sector 

protocols.

Offsite carbon

 Wood products Not accepted Wood products are assumed to oxidize 

completely when harvested. However, 

if it can be shown that stocks of 

wood products are increasing, there is 

flexibility in the reporting mechanism.

The program has not addressed this 

point specifically but may do so in the 

2006 land use sector protocols.

 Biomass energy Not accepted Not addressed The program has not addressed this 

point specifically but may do so in the 

2006 land use sector protocols.

Measurement Methodology

Calculation/

estimation methods 

(or metrics and data 

protocols)

These must be approved 

by the executive board. No 

forestry methods have been 

approved yet.

Two approaches are described: (1) 

calculation of annual change in 

carbon stocks resulting from annual 

losses and gains in carbon stocks and 

(2) a stock exchange method in which 

carbon inventories are taken at two 

points in time and then compared.

Project developers must describe the 

methods to be employed—that is, 

whether direct measurement, models, 

or other techniques will be used. The 

Project Protocol provides formulas for 

calculating biological sequestration.

Sampling and/or 

monitoring methods

These must be approved 

by the executive board. No 

forestry methods have been 

approved yet.

Information not obtained on this 

subject for this report.

Project developers must develop a 

monitoring plan for all identified 

primary and secondary GHG effects 

of the project. 

Accuracy/quality 

control standards

Methodologies (and 

corresponding quality 

control) must be approved 

by executive board.

Three tiers of data standards are 

employed depending on the importance 

of the carbon pool to the overall 

carbon budget and the country-specific 

data available. Tier 1 uses default 

LULUCF values; higher tiers are asked 

to report sources of all emission and 

sequestration data, results of any models 

used, and analysis of emission changes.

They must describe how they will 

store data and establish quality 

assurance/quality control and must 

state the uncertainty involved in their 

measurement and/or estimation tools.

Exclusions Information not obtained on 

this subject for this report.

Information not obtained on this 

subject for this report.

None listed

Reporting

Reporting frequency 

(testing, monitoring, 

and certification)

Information not obtained on 

this subject for this report.

Information not obtained on this 

subject for this report

None listed.

continued
33

Program

Kyoto Protocol, 

Clean Development 

Mechanism

Intergovernmental Panel on 

Climate Change and Land Use, 

Land-Use Change and Forestry

World Resources Institute/World 

Business Council for Sustainable 

Development Project Protocol

Certification

Third-party 

certification

Project design must be 

validated by a “designated 

operational entity” prior 

to registration (requires a 

45-day notice and comment 

period). The CDM Executive 

Board must certify project. 

Emission reductions must be 

verified by the operational 

entity. 

This is not explicitly required. 

Section 5.7.3 offers several “good 

practice” recommendations for 

verifying results.

The program does not address this 

issue. Transparency and reporting 

standards are provided, but the 

program does not offer guidance on 

how to solicit or conduct third-party 

certification.

Forest Activities Accepted

Forest activities 

recognized

The program recognizes 

only reforestation and 

afforestation projects. 

Reforestation must be on 

land degraded or unforested 

since 1989. 

Because the program has to do with 

changes in overall carbon stocks of 

individual nations, changes in stocks 

are recorded regardless of the type of 

forest activity.

The program has not addressed this 

point specifically but may do so in the 

2006 land use sector protocols.

Forest type allowed 

(native, etc.)

Projects must monitor 

and remedy any negative 

environmental or 

socioeconomic impact, but the 

issue of native forests is not 

addressed directly. 

There are no forest type 

requirements; the guidelines are for 

an inventory of all carbon stocks, 

regardless of species.

The program has not addressed this 

point specifically but may do so in the 

2006 land use sector protocols.

Required and/or 

suggested forest 

management 

practices

Any negative socioeconomic 

or environmental impact must 

be monitored and remedied 

according to native country’s 

law.

Information not obtained on this 

subject for this report.

The program has not addressed this 

point specifically but may do so in the 

2006 land use sector protocols.

Baseline and Additionality

Additionality Carbon sequestration must be 

in addition to sequestration that 

would have occurred without 

the project.

The inventory doesn’t deal with 

reductions at the individual-project 

level, which is the level at which 

additionality is considered.

This is addressed only indirectly, 

through the baseline requirements.

continued
34

Program

Kyoto Protocol, 

Clean Development 

Mechanism

Intergovernmental Panel on 

Climate Change and Land Use, 

Land-Use Change and Forestry

World Resources Institute/World 

Business Council for Sustainable 

Development Project Protocol

Baseline The baseline must 

project how carbon pools 

would change over time 

if the project were not 

implemented. Three baseline 

approaches are specified. 

Projects must begin after 

2001.

Simple stock change or annual 

increment can be used since this is 

an inventory approach.

The program provides details for (1) 

a performance standard procedure 

and (2) a project-specific baseline 

procedure. Both procedures involve 

identifying a baseline scenario 

which “describes an activity or a 

set of activities that result in GHG 

emissions against which project 

activity emissions can be compared.” 

A project developer must describe 

the estimation and measurement 

techniques used to establish baseline 

emission levels.

Permanence

Permanence The CDM allows projects to 

generate credits for up to 60 

years, subject to verification 

every 5 years. It allows 

temporary CERs (10-year 

max) and long-term CERs 

(up to 60 years).

The program simply tracks carbon 

stocks over time and does not 

address permanence.

The program does not deal with 

permanence; this is left to discretion 

of project developer.

Crediting period, 

e.g., length of time 

carbon credits from 

registry are valid

This is either a maximum of 

20 years with two renewals 

possible (60 years total) or a 

maximum of 30 years with 

no renewal.

The program does not issue credits. The program does not issue credits.

Leakage

Leakage Leakage is defined as an 

increase in GHG emissions 

outside the project boundary 

that is attributable to a 

CDM project. Projects must 

be designed to minimize 

leakage and must monitor 

for leakage.

 Information not obtained on this 

subject for this report. However, 

leakage doesn’t seem applicable as 

LULUCF deals more with national 

level GHG inventories.

Leakage is discussed as “secondary 

effects.” Project developers are asked 

to define primary and secondary 

effects of the GHG reduction project 

and consider all secondary effects that 

are significant in quantifying GHG 

reductions.

DOE = U.S. Department of Energy; GHG = greenhouse gas; CCX = Chicago Climate Exchange; CDM = Clean Development Mechanism; NA = not applicable; 

FPP = forestry project protocol; COLE = carbon online estimator; RGGR = Regional Greenhouse Gas Registry; RGGI = Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative; 

NESCAUM = Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management; WRI = World Resources Institute; WBCSD = World Business Council for Sustainable 

Development; GFC = Georgia Forestry Commission; CT = Climate Trust; RFP = request for proposals; CCAR = CA Climate Action Registry;

IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; LULUCF = land use, land-use change and forestry; CER = certified emission reduction.

This comparison of carbon registries, forestry sector, includes registries and other related protocols.
35

Additionality: emission reduction or sequestration that is 

in addition to reduction or sequestration that would occur 

in a “business as usual” scenario. For example, if State law 

requires a forestland owner to replant an area with trees, then 

carbon sequestered through the planting is not additional, 

since the landowner was legally required to plant it.

Afforestation: the process of replanting and/or growing 

forests on land that has not been forested in recent history.

Allowances: often refers to the basic tradable commodity 

within greenhouse gas emission trading systems. 

Allowances grant their holder the right to emit a specific 

quantity of pollution once, e.g., 1 ton of carbon dioxide. 

Baseline: a point in time, or a level of carbon, from which 

an entity or project will measure changes in carbon stocks.

Biological emissions: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that 

are released directly to the atmosphere from biomass, both 

live and dead. For forests, biological emissions are GHG 

emissions released from forest biomass, both live and dead, 

including forest soils. 

Carbon dioxide equivalent: the unit of measurement used 

to indicate the global warming potential of greenhouse 

gases. It is used to evaluate the impacts of releasing (or 

avoiding the release of) different greenhouse gases. 

Carbon sequestration: the removal of carbon from the 

atmosphere.

Carbon sink: a reservoir or depository that can absorb 

carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Forests are a common 

form of sink.

Credit: carbon sequestered in excess of the required amount. 

Downstream effects: secondary greenhouse gas effects 

associated with the products produced by a project activity.

Entity: the unit that participates in a registry—commonly 

a corporation, city, county, or State government, or other 

legally constituted body.

Forest carbon sequestration: can occur through 

afforestation, reforestation, and alteration of land 

management practices to maximize carbon retention on 

the land. Forest carbon can be sequestered in aboveground 

biomass, roots, soils, woody debris, and postharvest wood 

products. 

Geological carbon sequestration: the removal of carbon 

from the atmosphere by injecting carbon dioxide directly 

into underground geological formations.

Global warming potential: a term used to describe the 

relative potency, molecule for molecule, of a greenhouse gas 

(GHG), taking into account how long it remains active in the 

atmosphere. The global warming potentials (GWP) currently 

used are those calculated over 100 years. Carbon dioxide 

is taken as the gas of reference, with a 100-year GWP of 1. 

All the other GHGs have a much higher GWP than carbon 

dioxide, molecule for molecule. Carbon dioxide still has a 

higher net impact on global warming, though, because it is 

present at much higher concentrations in the atmosphere 

than are the other GHGs.

Gas

Global warming 

potential 

(approximate)

Concentration 

in atmosphere 

(ppbv)

Carbon dioxide (CO2

) 1 358,000

Methane (CH4

) 21 1,721

Nitrous oxide (N2

O) 310 311

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)

 (HCFC–22 as an example)

1,300 – 1,400 0.105

Perfluorocarbons (PFCs)

 (CF4

 as an example)

6,500 0.070

Hexafluoride (SF6

) 23,900 0.032

ppbv = Concentrations expressed as “parts per billion volume.” 

Concentrations listed are for 1994 atmospheric levels.

Greenhouse gas: the term greenhouse gas (GHG) refers to a 

set of gases that all add heat to the Earth’s atmosphere, namely 

carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, 

perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. GHGs accomplish 

a warming effect because they all absorb and emit radiation at 

specific wavelengths within the spectrum of infrared radiation 

emitted by the Earth’s surface, the atmosphere, and the clouds. 

The radiation emitted by the GHGs increases the temperature 

of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Leakage: the extent to which events occurring outside the 

project boundary tend to reduce a project’s carbon dioxide 

emissions benefit. For example, avoiding deforestation in 

one place might lead to acceleration of deforestation in some 

other place. This can apply to all types of carbon dioxide 

reduction projects.

Appendix B

Forest Carbon Definitions
36

Nonbiological emissions: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 

that are not directly released from biomass. For example, 

GHGs from fossil fuel combustion qualify as nonbiological 

emissions.

Offset: the results of an action implemented to avoid, 

sequester, or displace emissions of carbon dioxide. Offsets 

are often referred to in the context of a regulatory scheme—

occurring when there is a surplus created by voluntary 

reductions in excess of required reductions. Offsets can 

become credits, which can be traded, in a cap-and-trade 

regulatory system.

Permanence: ability of a project to weather exposure to 

variables and events that put at risk its ability to maintain 

the reduction in carbon dioxide output. Permanent projects 

permanently avoid or displace emissions of carbon dioxide; 

nonpermanent projects offer the reduction in carbon dioxide 

output only for a limited amount of time.

Project: a planned activity or set of activities to remove, 

reduce, or prevent carbon dioxide emissions in the 

atmosphere.

Reforestation: replanting trees in recently harvested areas.

Registry: legal way for entities to list sequestered carbon. 

Registries vary in scope, inclusions, verifiability, and 

protocols. 

Reservoir: area where carbon is stored. 

Sink: the process, activity, or mechanism that removes 

carbon from the atmosphere by absorbing and storing it, 

thereby offsetting carbon dioxide emissions.

Terrestrial carbon sequestration: the removal of carbon 

from the atmosphere through fixation of carbon dioxide by 

terrestrial vegetation. All vegetation types sequester some 

carbon—rangeland, row crops, wetlands, forests, etc. The 

rate of sequestration, however, varies by vegetation type.

Upstream effects: secondary greenhouse gas effects of a 

project’s activities associated with their input. For example, 

an afforestation project involves activities such as growing 

and transporting the nursery stock. These activities can 

have upstream effects (or externalities that have not been 

internalized) in terms of fossil fuel consumption or pesticide 

and fertilizer use. 
Call, Jessica and Hayes, Jennifer, 2007. A description and comparison of selected 

 forest carbon registries: a guide for States considering the development of a forest

 carbon registry. Gen. Tech. Rep. SRS–107. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department

 of Agriculture Forest Service, Southern Research Station. 36 p. 

There is increasing interest in tools for measuring and reducing emissions of carbon 

dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. Two tools that have been receiving a lot of attention 

include carbon markets and carbon registries. Carbon registries are established to 

record and track net carbon emission levels over time. These registries provide 

quantifiable and verifiable carbon for trade within a market. This report discusses the 

benefits and major elements of registries and then describes a selection of existing 

registries and protocols with forest carbon components. The report focuses on forests 

because of their carbon storage potential. The purpose of this report is to provide a 

starting point for any State government or other party considering the development of 

a carbon registry with a forestry component.

Keywords: Carbon, forest, markets, registry, sequestration.
The Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 

is dedicated to the principle of multiple use management of the 

Nation’s forest resources for sustained yields of wood, water, 

forage, wildlife, and recreation. Through forestry research, cooperation with 

the States and private forest owners, and management of the National Forests 

and National Grasslands, it strives—as directed by Congress—to provide 

increasingly greater service to a growing Nation.

The USDA prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the 

basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and where applicable, sex, 

marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, 

genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or part of an 

individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all 

prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require 

alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large 

print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET Center at (202) 720-

2600 (voice and TDD).

To file a complaint of discrimination, write to USDA, Director, Office of 

Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250–9410 

or call (800) 795-3272 (voice) or (202) 720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal 

opportunity provider and employer.