Aggregation: Breaking Down Barriers for Smaller Land Trusts
The Wildlands Carbon project will employ a multi-owner approach that aggregates smaller properties into one, larger carbon project.
Traditionally, a minimum of 3,500 acres was required in order to offset the costs of setting up a carbon project. Through aggregation, landowners and land trusts in the Northeast can now pool resources, split costs, and enter the market.
In exchange for permanently protecting properties as wildlands—meaning no resource extraction or land conversion will ever occur—participants gain access to revenue on the carbon market that they can use to keep forests standing and storing carbon indefinitely.
SIG Carbon shares Northeast Wilderness Trust’s appreciation of wild forests, and values conservation efforts that will truly help address the climate crisis. SIG will manage the carbon projects for their full 40-year terms.
With a strong relationship that spans more than a decade, SIG Carbon previously worked with NEWT to enroll the Howland Research Forest and the Alder Stream Wilderness Preserve in the California Climate Action Reserve (CAR). These projects were among the first in the country to register carbon credits on protected wilderness. To date, credits from these two properties alone have generated more than $580,000 in revenue to support the conservation of forever-wild land with Northeast Wilderness Trust.
Through the Wildlands Carbon project, SIG Carbon and NEWT are creating an aggregation model that can be replicated across the country.