On Tuesday 14 April 2020, alongside the Forestry Commission, Defra announced that £10m will be available in the second auction of the Woodland Carbon Guarantee to help boost tree-planting rates in the fight against climate change.
Land managers across England are being encouraged to sign up to the scheme by 5 June, ahead of the next auction which will take place online from 8 to 19 June.
The announcement has been covered in trade outlets including Farmers Weekly, Farming UK, Business Green, Energy Live News, Horticulture Week and Forestry Journal.
Launched in November 2019, the Woodland Carbon Guarantee is a £50 million scheme that aims to help accelerate woodland planting rates and permanently remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Successful participants will be offered the option to sell Woodland Carbon Units to the government over 35 years at a guaranteed price set by auction and protected against inflation, providing new income for land managers who help businesses compensate for their carbon emissions.
This announcement follows the success of the first auction which closed in February 2020 and saw 18 contracts offered by the Forestry Commission to help stimulate the creation of 182 hectares of new woodland, specifically to help combat climate change.
Sir William Worsley, Chair of the Forestry Commission, said:
The Woodland Carbon Guarantee is the first scheme of its kind to provide land managers with long-term certainty of a guaranteed payment rate for carbon, which their trees lock up and store.
I’m excited to announce that the first auction has successfully encouraged projects in parts of the country where new planting has been lower in recent years, and across a good range of woodland types.
There is no reason to delay applying and to plant trees now - I strongly encourage all land managers thinking about planting to sign up ahead of the second auction in June.
Speaking of the benefits of the Guarantee, Forestry Minister Lord Goldsmith said:
Trees are a precious natural asset and, as a natural carbon sink, are a vital part of the fight against climate change.
In addition to providing long-term income support to land managers for creating new woodland, it is our hope that this Guarantee will play an important role in developing the domestic carbon market in future.
To apply for the Woodland Carbon Guarantee, land managers need to register their projects with the Woodland Carbon Code - the voluntary standard for UK woodland creation projects where claims are made about the carbon dioxide they sequester.
1 comment
Comment by Dave Stanley posted on
Look through the criteria – could you please advise what the minimum area/hectares are for the scheme please?