New Hampshire now has a registry of properties in the state enrolled in carbon credit programs, through which trees are kept standing and sequestering carbon to serve as offsets to the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.
Five landowners – located in Belknap, Carroll, Coös, Grafton, Merrimack, and Strafford counties – are listed in the online registry, which was announced by the Division of Forests and Lands late last month. It was created at the direction of House Bill 1697, which went into effect this summer.
Together, the properties include over 182,000 acres. A chunk of land in Coös County owned by Connecticut Lakes Realty Trust, first enrolled in a 100-year project in 2013, makes up more than 141,000 of those acres, according to the registry.
The idea behind the programs is rooted in the fact that trees naturally absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So when a carbon credit is purchased – by a corporation, a nonprofit, an individual, or some other entity – those trees are promised to remain standing for a certain period of time, therefore ridding the air of some of the carbon emissions that are contributing to a warming planet.
The registry offers a new look at the carbon credit programs in one of the most tree-covered states in the nation. About 80% of the state is forested, and for every resident, there are about 3.4 acres of forest, according to calculations done with a 2020 federal estimate of the state’s acreage.
Per the new law, the registry includes the landowner’s name, the program in which the property is enrolled, the date it was enrolled, the length of the program, the acreage of the land, and references to the tax maps and lot numbers of the land. Listed programs range in length from 40 to 100 years. The most recent project reflected in the registry launched in 2022.
The law requires that landowners, their agents, or the carbon program administrators inform the municipality or municipalities where the property is located that they plan to enroll in such a program. To kick-start the registry, the division reached out to landowners directly, according to a news release.
“Without exception, they were all cooperative and willing to assist us in the process,” said Patrick Hackley, the division director and the state forester, in a statement. “Now anyone interested in finding out about carbon credit program enrollment in New Hampshire has a resource for this information.”
Rep. Arnold Davis, a Milan Republican, spearheaded the bill that brought forth the registry. He pointed to the potential cost of the programs in lost timber tax revenue. In New Hampshire, after a certain point in chopping and with certain exceptions, timber is taxed at a rate of 10% of its “stumpage value,” which the Department of Revenue Administration describes as “the value of wood, measured per thousand board feet of saw logs or tons of pulpwood.”
The other part of the new law requires that the DRA study the “issues related to lost timber tax revenue as a result of forest lands located within New Hampshire being enrolled in carbon credit offset programs.” A preliminary report with findings and legislative recommendations was due to the Legislature by Nov. 1; a final report is due by Nov. 1, 2025.
In its report, the DRA found that timber tax revenue data from 2011 to 2023 “suggests a general overall growth trend,” bringing in more than $3.4 million across all counties in 2023. In recent years, Grafton, Coös, and Merrimack counties have had the highest shares of the tax revenue.
“I just felt like, in one sense, it’s not fair to the towns,” Davis said when he spoke to the Bulletin about the bill this summer. “It’s not fair to the rest of the residents in the town to pay, you know, pay higher taxes, because these people are never going to cut their timber, and not pay taxes on it. “
Davis also raised concerns about the potential impacts on the logging industry, truckers, and sawmills. He said he spoke to one sawmill manager who said their operation would begin trucking in logs from New York after struggling to get local logs. Davis felt that added transportation, and the associated emissions, would cut down on the intended benefits of the carbon programs.
“I don’t see any trees being saved. They’ve got to be cut somewhere,” Davis said. “I think it would make sense to do it locally, especially when we’ve been doing it historically for, you know, 100 years, 150 years, 200 years, with great success.”
The issue will return to the State House this session. House Bill 123, of which Davis is the prime sponsor, would clarify existing law to ensure that municipalities can reap tax revenue from standing trees enrolled in carbon credit programs. The DRA pointed in its report to this statute, saying that it “allows for taxation of standing wood and timber in certain circumstances but is almost never utilized by municipalities due, in part, to the difficulty of interpreting the above underlined clauses.”
While Davis said in July that he wasn’t necessarily opposed to the carbon programs, he didn’t feel they were right for New Hampshire.
“The timber industry is very important up here,” said Davis, a lifelong Coös County resident. “It’s not what it used to be, but it’s still a very important issue towards economic development.”