Video Blog - Videos Available From Nutrient Credit And Carbon Trading Workshop

In February, the Pennsylvania Association of Conservation Districts, the Pennsylvania Environmental Council and the Capital Resource Conservation and Development Area Council jointly hosted two one-day seminars on nutrient credit and carbon trading in State College and Lancaster.

 

PACD now has available for online viewing each of the presentations from that workshop--

 

Nutrient trading is a voluntary, market driven program that helps to identify and finance cost-effective solutions to reducing nutrient loadings into a watershed. The program allows one nutrient generating source to meet reduction goals by acquiring nutrient reduction credits from another source within the same watershed.

 

Credits are generated when a source reduces nutrient loadings to a greater extent than is required. A non-point source must first ensure that it is meeting baseline compliance, and then that it is meeting minimum requirements referred to as “threshold requirements.”

 

The installation of Best Management Practices, which are above these requirements, can generate credits for a nonpoint source.

 

For example, a farmer who decides to plant no-till corn for silage and plant cover crops can generate nutrient reduction credits and possibly sell those to a local municipality that needs credits to meet their environmental permit requirements.

 

By converting to no-till and planting cover crops or forested stream buffers that farmer can also generate carbon sequestration credits and potentially sell those credits in new emerging carbon credit markets like the Chicago Climate Exchange.

 

For more information, visit the PACD Nutrient Credit and Carbon Trading seminar webpage.