Guizhou province's forest carbon credits worth over 13m yuan

By the end of August, a carbon sink trading project in Southwest China's Guizhou province had reportedly covered 11,793 families in nine cities and prefectures.

It involves more than 4.65 million trees and under the carbon trading system, and it can sell 46.58 million kilograms of carbon annually – to companies who want to buy it under the program to officially offset their own emissions – worth more than 13.18 million yuan ($1.86 million).

That's been estimated to help each family increase its annual income of about 1,100 yuan on average.

A carbon sink is anything that absorbs more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it releases. Forests offer a net carbon sink as they take in more carbon than they emit – and this has a commercial value which is traded on a specialist exchange.

Carbon trading is the process of buying and selling permits and credits for manufacturers and other concerns to emit CO2 and the companies make carbon sink transactions.

The carbon sink trading project involves families in Guizhou that have forestland and relatively low incomes. The project categorizes the trees according to varieties, size and carbon sink capabilities and uploads the information onto Guizhou's carbon sink big data platform.

Each tree has an annual carbon sink value of 3 yuan on average. With the data base – containing basic information on trees, carbon sink values and tree owners – Guizhou encourages individuals, companies, groups and government departments to purchase carbon sinks to officially reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.

The Guizhou Environment and Energy Exchange – operator of the carbon sink big data platform – and government departments at the municipal and provincial levels are implementing the carbon sink program, so as to transform the forests' ecological value into economic value.

In March, the Guizhou Environment and Energy Exchange identified a carbon sink for sale of 116,000 trees in Fengshan township and Yangchang town in Dafang county, with an estimated value of 340,000 yuan.

Moving forwards, plans are for the Guizhou Environment and Energy Exchange to boost publicity on the project and provide better platform services to contribute to the goals of carbon neutrality and peak emissions.