Dive Brief:
- Netflix signed a 15-year contract last week to purchase verified carbon credits from the American Forest Foundation, a national conservation organization focused on sustainable forest management and facilitating family forest owners.
- The credits will be produced through AFF’s “Fields & Forests” program, an afforestation, reforestation and revegetation carbon project that collaborates with landowners across the U.S. to convert their underused fields into working forests.
- Netflix’s partnership with AFF will support the project’s first 6,000 acres of land and spread the initiative across the U.S. South, which AFF said in a Sept. 3 release will provide “additional revenue streams to rural landowners while planting trees to combat climate change.”
Dive Insight:
The Fields & Forests program is currently available to landowners in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina that have over 30 acres of unplanted fields and are looking to diversify their property. AFF said the program is tailored to small-acreage landowners who have historically been excluded from the voluntary carbon market due to high upfront costs and complexities attached to adopting such initiatives.
In order to qualify for the program, landowners must own property that has not been forested for at least 10 years and commit to a 30-year enrollment period. To make the program more accessible for landowners, AFF said it finances all costs associated with site preparation and tree plantation, in addition to providing landowners with technical support and annual payments throughout the contracts.
The program has enrolled 2,500 acres of family-owned lands to date — which are on track to plant 1.4 million new trees — and has pledged $2 million in direct payments to landowners, according to AFF. The conservation organization said it aims to expand the program to 75,000 acres by 2032, which it says will be able generate 4.8 million carbon credits.
To support the expansion of the program, Netflix provided early-stage financing through a “milestone prepayment” arrangement, tied to the number of acres enrolled in the program and trees planted.
“Netflix’s partnership shows what’s possible when business and nature come together,” John Ringer, AFF’s senior director of project finance and environmental markets, said in the release.
“With the right investment and science, natural climate solutions can be both a powerful and credible tool to address our most pressing conservation challenges,” Ringer said.
Netflix’s carbon credit deal with AFF is in line with the media and streaming giant’s broader efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. Netflix has a target to reduce its emissions by roughly 50% by 2030 and match any remaining emissions from 2022 onwards through investments in natural climate solutions.
The streaming service said it will “continue to reduce [its] emissions in line with the latest climate science until global net-zero is achieved,” beyond its 2030 climate goals.
