Carbon Credit Generation Program: Cost Effective Procedures to Estimate, Aggregate, Verify & Deliver Carbon Credits to Private Sector Markets

The purpose of this award is for the grantee to provide market-based incentives to enable farmers and other agricultural producers to realize a new income stream derived from the provision of environmental services using existing and emerging carbon markets. The Chicago Climate Exchange will provide scientifically validated methodology and market-based incentives to enable farmers and other agricultural producers to realize a new income stream derived from the provision of environmental services increasingly in demand through existing and emerging carbon markets. These markets are national and potentially global and serve to provide a cost-effective mechanism to aid the overall management and reduction of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. Specifically the program seeks to implement and intensify an innovative system for securing, verifying, and registering sequestered carbon by agricultural producers through conservation tillage, improved manure management, and small scale forestry. These procedures can enable producers to capture, store and reduce GHG emissions while also creating significant environmental co-benefits from enhanced air, soil, and water quality through the use of these emissions reducing practices.