Credits?

Afforestation is a process of planting trees on land that has not been recently forested. Nusanterra offers landowners the opportunity to earn carbon revenue through our Afforestation projects and uses Verra’s afforestation, restoration and revegetation methodology for carbon removal verification. 

A carbon credit is a certificate that can be bought with the purpose of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions. One credit usually represents one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) avoided or removed from the atmosphere. 

VCUs (Verified Carbon Units) are one type of carbon credit and one VCU represents a reduction or removal of one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) achieved by a Verra project as part of their Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) program.

The exact income will depend on the type of trees planted, land quality, project length, etc. As an example, an afforestation project on high-quality land in XXX is expected to generate approximately XXX VCUs / Ha over a 50-year contract. If VCU prices are at XXX MYR, an afforestation project may generate around XXX MYR / Ha.

This is an estimated income and depends on specific conditions as well as the carbon credit price at the time of sale. Your lands’ potential income is calculated in a Carbon Revenue Opportunity Assessment.

Afforestation and Impact Forestry both include grouped projects, which involve multiple landowners. Grouped projects save landowners money because they generate monitoring and verification efficiencies. Grouped projects have a much lower unit cost base than single landowner projects and can also generate larger volumes of carbon credits, which offers sales and marketing advantages. Carbon credit buyers often want to buy large volumes of specific carbon credits (e.g. carbon credits from afforestation) from a single vintage (i.e. produced in a specific year).

Nusanterra will group landowners based on their regional risk profile and management objectives (e.g. managing forests for timber versus managing forests for conservation). Members of a grouped project are likely to come from a similar region (e.g. Baltic states) and manage forests in a similar way.

Nusanterra will develop and manage carbon monitoring and verification for each grouped project. The monitoring and verification activities of each group member will be synchronised to meet the reporting requirements of Verra (see What is Verra?). However, Nusanterra will not operate our grouped projects as a single carbon pool or as a cooperative. Nusanterra will monitor the performance of each group member and as far as possible, distribute carbon payments based on the performance of individual group members. Group members will not receive an average share of each grouped project. 

Nusanterra arranges for and covers the costs of the Verra certification and validation process (usually undertaken by a third-party Verra partner).

However, as a landowner, you are required to share monitoring data (e.g whether you’ve harvested any timber, any fire or pest impacts etc) with us every 5 years (more frequently if you’ve opted into annual cash payments), throughout the length of the contract. The monitoring is needed to pass verification, which enables landowners to maximise carbon revenues. Where-ever possible, we use data you are already gathering for government reporting etc, but at times this may require additional data gathering from you.

We are also continuously working on automating the process and using remote sensing technologies such as satellite imagery combined with AI-based analysis in order to reduce the monitoring burden on landowners.