One of the largest wildfires in California’s history has burnt through swaths of forest earmarked for conservation under carbon credit plans backed by companies including oil refining and power groups. The blaze so far covering 450,000 acres, known as the Park Fire, has destroyed around 45,000 acres of trees enrolled in California’s carbon offset programme, according to estimates by non-profit research group CarbonPlan.
Other fires earlier this year also affected more than 29,000 acres of forest in Washington state and New Mexico that are also part of California’s carbon credit programme, according to the analysis, with buyers including Chevron, Shell and BP. The Californian programme gives forest owners credits for preserving trees in an effort to store and absorb carbon, with the credits then sold to other businesses to offset their pollution.
The Park Fire includes parcels that belong to the second-largest US lumber company, the family-owned Sierra Pacific Industries, which was registered to sell credits to companies which include them in their climate plans. A distributor of oil-based products, Tricor Refining, and energy trading group Rainbow Energy Marketing Corporation were among the buyers of credits from forests affected by the Park Fire.
In New Mexico, Chevron bought 1.77mn credits from a forest management project run by the Mescalero Apache tribe, according to CarbonPlan, which lost about 6 per cent of its area to fire earlier this summer. Shell bought around 145,000 credits linked to burnt areas in Washington state, while BP North America purchased around 1.4mn credits from the same project.
The oil and gas companies did not immediately respond to request for comment.