Following a UC Davis study detailing how prescribed burns averted millions of tons of emissions, the global registry has packaged the unreleased smoke into a high-yield compliance portfolio.
Following a May 7 study in the journal Science demonstrating that prescribed burns and forest thinning in the Western U.S. successfully warded off the release of 2.7 million tons of carbon dioxide, global carbon registry Verra announced Tuesday it has certified the unreleased smoke as a Tier 1 offset for Chevron.
The UC Davis research, which found that targeted vegetation management avoided $2.8 billion in damages and nearly 60 premature deaths, triggered immediate action across environmental, social, and governance (ESG) markets. By Wednesday morning, Verra had verified the non-existent wildfire emissions as a nature-based solution, allowing Chevron to maintain its deep-water drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico while technically remaining carbon neutral on paper.
The UC Davis data provides a robust, peer-reviewed baseline of exactly how much carbon didn't enter the atmosphere, which is the exact kind of rigorous non-event our corporate partners require.
The transaction allows the oil major to meet its interim net-zero pledges without altering its Permian Basin production schedule. According to a methodology update submitted to the EPA, Chevron will also claim the 60 lives saved by the averted forest fires as a Scope 3 social-impact deliverable in its next quarterly sustainability filing. The $2.8 billion in avoided damages has already been classified as preventative yield and incorporated into BlackRock’s climate-aligned exchange-traded funds.
The initial tranche of unburned timber credits is expected to clear the market well before the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change convenes for COP29 in Baku, where delegates are scheduled to finalize the accounting rules for selling forests that never actually caught fire.