The Biden administration said Tuesday it will spend $150 million to help owners of small parcels of forestland partner with companies willing to pay them for carbon offsets and other environmental credits.
The grant program was announced at a press conference in Brunswick, Georgia, and allows private companies to offset their own emissions by paying to protect trees that have disproportionately benefited owners of large acreage.
The grant money comes from the sweeping climate law passed by Congress just over a year ago and targets underserved landowners, including military veterans and new farmers, as well as families owning 2,500 acres or less.
The goal is to protect more tracts of U.S. forest to help fight climate change. The past decade has seen a rapidly expanding market in which companies pay landowners to grow or conserve trees, which absorb carbon from the atmosphere, to counterbalance their own carbon emissions.
