GHG Emissions Accounting for Agriculture and Forestry Offset Projects - 5-day Intensive Course

New dates to be announced soon...

This 5-day intensive course will provide students with the information and resources to quantify GHG emissions from agriculture and forestry offset projects. Students will learn through lectures, exercises, hands-on experiences in the field and laboratory, and demonstrations of accounting tools. Topics covered during the course include:

Policy background

• Climate change legislation
• 'Cap and Trade' systems
• Principles of offsetting
• Compliance and voluntary offset markets

Introduction to agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) project types

• Types of AFOLU projects
• AFOLU GHG emissions and mitigation
• Key principles of project accounting, including additionality, baselines, permanence and leakage

Accounting methodologies

• Introduction to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AFOLU methodology, reporting and uncertainty estimation
• GHG standards and programs that include AFOLU projects
• Existing protocols for AFOLU offset projects

Field and laboratory methods for monitoring GHG emissions/removals

• Soil carbon field sampling design and laboratory processing and analysis
• N₂O flux measurements in the field and laboratory analysis

Calculators for estimating GHG emissions/removals

• General overview of calculators as well as some in-depth demonstrations and exercises

AFOLU Project Development

• Project development components including defining projects, determining baseline scenarios, addressing issues such as additionality, leakage, and non-permanence, monitoring GHG emissions and removals, and uncertainty
• Examples from existing offset programs