Industry groups are lobbying Congress and making a public relations push to promote privately managed forests as carbon sinks -- a bid for a place in potential cap-and-trade schemes for greenhouse gas emissions.

The industry's congressional testimony, posters and educational materials promote the potential for carbon storage in young, growing forests managed by timber companies and in manufactured wood products, even old wooden furniture and Revolutionary War-era homes.

"We're in the business of growing trees and putting carbon in long-term storage through the lumber and wood products we produce," said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, an Oregon-based timber industry group.

"It's just such common sense," West said. "What's the number one carbon offset? Planting trees. We do that for a living."

The stakes for the timber industry are high. Since 1997, 136 pulp and paper mills have closed in the United States, according to the American Forest & Paper Association. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates North American timber interests face annual losses between $1 billion and $2 billion by the end of the 21st century, from a combination of increased wildfires, insect invasions and plant disease.

"You do have an industry that's pretty uniquely positioned in the whole climate discussion," said David Tenny, vice president of AF&PA. "I'm quite certain there isn't an industry that's done more to use carbon in a responsible way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere."

Because of the attention to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, carbon storage could be a key money maker in the future, the industry says, but officials cannot say for sure. The groups haven't estimated how much carbon credits could be worth to the industry or whether benefits from a carbon market could offset potential increases in energy prices.

"I don't know of anybody making investments based on carbon offsets," West said. "But the reality is if we're truly going to address the issue we're going to have to look at things we're doing and know how to do on the release of carbon."

Bang for the buck
To maximize the carbon sequestration potential, timber companies, and potentially the Forest Service, need to continue to harvest forests and plant new trees, because growing trees sequester carbon at a higher rate than older trees.

"It seems clear from modeling studies that, in the long run, managed forests that incorporate a sequence of harvests result in more carbon sequestered than a forest left unmanaged," John Helms, former president of the Society of American Foresters, told a House hearing earlier this year.

"This is because young forests are more efficient in carbon sequestration," Helms said. "Old forests store more carbon, but as they age the net uptake of carbon dioxide can diminish to zero as carbon lost in respiration and decomposition becomes similar to the rates of carbon uptake."

Preliminary findings from a study commissioned by Sierra Pacific Industries to be released next month will demonstrate the benefits of actively managed forests. "It looks to us that when you incorporate the long-term carbon stored in wood products, the more intensively managed forests are better for carbon sequestration overall than an unmanaged forest," said Mark Pawlicki, Sierra Pacific's director of government affairs.

The Forest Service has used similar language to promote the Bush administration's Healthy Forests plans. "Active management of forests, as encouraged under the Healthy Forest Initiative and Healthy Forest Restoration Act, can mitigate the effects of climate change," Jim Hubbard, the service's deputy chief for state and private forestry told a House panel in April. "The size and intensity of wildfires can be limited by reducing stand density and treating fuel buildup."

Tomorrow, the Forest Service and National Forest Foundation will announce they are entering the voluntary carbon offset market, providing specific, measurable ways to balance carbon footprints. USFS claims the partnership will help restore national forests damaged by natural disasters and catastrophic wildfires.

'Same old timber beast' Environmentalists say the industry is using the climate debate to pursue unsustainable timber harvests.

"It's the same old timber beast, with the same old solution, which is, 'Let us cut down more trees no matter what the problem is,'" said Franz Matzner of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Whether it's forest fires, climate change or rural economics, their answer always seems to be the same."

The debate over carbon credits is part of a larger fight over the future of forest products. For instance, the industry wants to include woody biomass in renewable energy targets and add timber products to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building rating standard from the U.S. Green Building Council.

"It has nothing to do with what's right for finding solutions to this perceived problem we have in relation to carbon, it's about control of the forest," West said.

Tenny, West and others are promoting the actions the timber and wood products industry are already taking, such as using woody biomass and timber waste to produce 60 percent of the industry's energy sources, and the industry's Sustainable Forest Initiative.

But the industry isn't ready yet to endorse a mandatory system or any cap-and-trade bills on Capitol Hill.

"There's a general concern about what the impacts of any type of regulatory scheme would be on the cost of energy," Tenny said, citing potential increases in consumer and energy prices and the ability for U.S. companies to compete globally. "We're always concerned about policies that affect the viability of the industry and we're always concerned about the fiber supply, whether you're a landowner or manufacturer."

Critics of using forests as carbon sinks cite the difficulty with verifying and tracking carbon offsets and the potential for wildfires, which would not only lose the stored carbon but release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In addition, paying U.S. companies not to cut forests to sequester carbon could simply transfer demand for timber overseas, leading to increased deforestation in tropical regions.

William Schlesinger, the new president of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., says timber companies shouldn't be given credits unless they can show they're sequestering additional amounts of carbon above and beyond their normal activities. "The carbon that's sequestered that might not have been sequestered otherwise is what you want to count," he said.

"There is a lot of room for misbehavior, even fraudulent behavior," Schlesinger said. "It's not likely that the value of the credit would exceed the cost of proving an adequate audit that in fact something was additional."

Harvesting old-growth forests releases large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere that isn't necessarily replaced by new stands, Schlesinger said. "Preserving old growth ... is always the winner."

Studies have also suggested that an increase in the number of dense, dark forests at higher latitudes could actually cause a warming effect if they retain more of the sun's heat than they reflect.