Arcata, California
United States
Majestic redwoods, Douglas firs, and bigleaf maples make the second-growth redwood forest known as the Arcata Sunny Brae Tract a magical place. This improved forestry project, part of the 2,350-acre Arcata Community Forest, stands on a hillside overlooking Northern California's Sunny Brae community near the city of Arcata. Local residents love to hike, mountain bike, and ride horses there.
In 2006, Arcata purchased the land from a timber company that planned to log it. That brought the timber under the city's conservation-based forest management, which permits only limited nonindustrial timber harvesting. Reducing the amount of harvesting sequesters more carbon in the wood of the trees, thus generating the carbon offsets.
A carbon offset represents the reduction of 1 metric ton (2,205 pounds) of carbon dioxide emissions. That reduction can be accomplished in many ways. For example, a project might capture and store CO2 before it’s emitted or, as the Arcata Sunny Brae project does, absorb (sequester) CO2 from the atmosphere. Other projects might reduce the need for producing energy from fossil fuels by producing it from a clean, renewable source instead, or by decreasing energy use through improved efficiency.
Cloverly buys offsets that meet accepted standards for being real, measurable, verifiable, permanent, and additional. "Additional" means that the carbon savings would not have happened without the offset project and that the project would not have happened unless it got certified to sell carbon offsets. The Climate Action Reserve oversees verification of the Arcata Sunny Brae project. You can find verification documents at https://thereserve2.apx.com/mymodule/reg/TabDocuments.asp?r=111&ad=Prpt&act=update&type=PRO&aProj=pub&tablename=doc&id1=575.
Projects can produce many offsets during a year, depending on how many tons of carbon they avoid, offset, or sequester. So a project may appear more than once in the Cloverly portfolio. You can tell the year of the offset by the date in the web address for each project: "12-months-starting-[month]-[year]." For a list of all the projects in our portfolio and an interactive map, see https://cloverly.com/offset-map.