Innovation

A small group of passionate and focused innovators from Middleburg, Virginia is committed to making an impact on opportunities for all. So far, we have helped deliver millions of new available acres to the Delta region for conservation, produced more available economic incentives for landowners, delivered more, diverse income opportunities for landowners from forest assets, designed a more productive tree-planting practice, and shaped the market mechanisms to better position the region’s forest market as a major resource to both mitigate the potential dangers from climate change and assist in our nation’s need for renewable energy supplies:

	C2I has pioneered the first-ever regional ecosystem carbon protocol called the ACRE Standard Protocol. Advanced Carbon Restored Ecosystem (ACRE) was designed to unitize assets that give exponential power to the co-benefits driving the premium market value for Verified Emission Reductions (VERs).
	C2I has brought its deep experience in building public-private partnerships to forest restoration carbon projects. This experience leverages dollars in various ways to create greater scale and returns from our projects.
	C2I has proposed the creation of the U.S. Federal Carbon Reserve as a mechanism for avoided deforestation to participate in the carbon market by creating an insurance backstop. This policy and market change could provide the second leading source of emissions worldwide (avoided deforestation) with the economic incentive to make a quantum difference in the fight against global climate change and insuring against delivery risk.
	C2I pioneered one of the first hybrid contract documents for the procuring of environmental rights, lending to the ability to create greater scale.
	C2I pioneered the 302 cottonwood-302 mixed hardwood inter-planting design for the carbon market. This practices greatly accelerates the growth and yield of the forest.
	In 2007, C2I launched the operations of the GreenTrees program, the first forest restoration project in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley to leverage carbon and biomass demand for maximizing the economic and environmental returns from every acre of new trees planted.

Policy
	In 2005, C2I successfully proposed that USDA permit 302-151 inter-planting and declare that the landowner maintains ownership of all carbon credits created.
	In 2007, C2I proposed incentive changes for the then-failed CP31 practice and argued for the available enrollment of an additional 500,000 acres. The incentive changes have since been established within the USDA budget. OMB is working to increase the acreage by the recommended 500,000 acres. The net effect will be the policy achievement of 1,000,000 available acres for bottomland hardwood forests.
	Since late 2007, C2I has successfully proposed to the respective state Farm Service Agencies in Arkansas, Mississippi and Kentucky to approve and apply cost-share to a 302 cottonwood-302 mixed hardwood inter-planting as an acceptable tree-planting option for landowner acres qualified for the USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). We are currently seeking identical approvals in Louisiana, Illinois, Tennessee and Missouri.
	Since 2006, C2I successfully lobbied for inclusion in the 2008 Farm Bill key incentive components to the 1,000,000 acre Farmable Wetland Pilot for the Delta region that will be available to Delta landowners from 2008 to 2012.