As part of our $30 million Climate-Smart Commodities project, New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) has launched its climate-smart forestry incentives program for commercial forest landowners. The first Request for Proposal (RFP) closed June 2024, but their will be several more opportunities to apply.
NEFF issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) in spring 2024 inviting commercial forest landowners across New England to participate in the first round or Design Phase of the program. The Design Phase RFP defines large commercial landowners as those owning 10,000 or more acres, and solicited projects involving approximately 300-2,000 acres of land. NEFF will announce which projects and landowners have been selected to participate in mid July 2024.
Overall, this program will provide approximately $10.5 million in climate-smart forestry incentives on commercial forestlands across the region. These funds will be awarded based on three rounds of projects, with the next RFPs issued on the following approximate schedule, to be adjusted as needed: early in 2025 and 2026.
The goal of the Design Phase is to develop, test and refine the program, and this initial round will specifically help test NEFF’s approach to the design of our incentives for landowners; refine the climate-smart forest practices landowners will implement; and inform the measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification work needed to track and model carbon and ecological outcomes of the program.
NEFF’s Climate-Smart Commodities team intends for the first round of projects to address the following components of the incentive program, with participants selected in part for their willingness to participate in the Design Phase.
The NEFF team will use lessons learned from the Design Phase to shape the next two larger rounds of commercial climate-smart forestry incentives within our overall Climate-Smart Commodities project.
Take a look at the climate-smart forestry practices that NEFF staff foresters and scientists have researched and defined for the Commercial Landowner Program. NEFF’s intention is that all practices, even those primarily aimed at increasing productivity or carbon storage, will be implemented in a way that increases adaptation—defined as increasing the forest’s capacity for resistance, resilience, and/or transition to future climate—where feasible.
If you have questions about elements of this RFP, please send them to Catrina Vear at cvear@newenglandforestry.org. You can also contact other members of the project team if you choose. In all cases, questions asked and answers provided will be posted here as publicly available information.
NEFF’s Climate-Smart Commodities, Large Commercial Forest Landowner Incentive Program is funded through the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. To receive funds, it is mandatory for the landowner or operator to establish records with USDA Farm Service Agency.
We will need to verify that your records cover the area where you plan to implement Climate-Smart Forestry practices. If they do, then you do not need to reestablish records.
Applicants should establish records after they are chosen for NEFF’s Climate-Smart Commodities Large Commercial Forest Landowner Incentive Program: Round 1 Design Phase. Applicants only need to establish records on the land where Climate-Smart Forestry practices are being implemented.
Yes, the instructions can be found by clicking the following button.
You need to fill out two worksheets to establish records with USDA Farm Service Agency. 1) AD-1026 Highly Erodible Land Conservation (HELC) and Wetalnd Conservation (WC) Certification. Please see the following instructions for establishing records with USDA FSA.
NEFF has asked USDA Farm Service Agency to provide details on how personal information provided on the CCC-901 is kept confidential and whether is exempt from a FOIA request. We will post what we learn as it comes to NEFF from USDA.
We have not set specific dollar or acreage targets for each round, but we expect the first (Design Phase) round to be smaller than the two following rounds.
We are looking for projects that address hundreds to low thousands of acres for the first round. We will provide further guidance ahead of future rounds, once we have learned from the Design Phase round. We anticipate subsequent rounds to allow for larger projects.
Because this is a design round, we are looking to fund projects across a range of geographical areas, forest types, forest conditions, and practices. We do not anticipate allocating all of the funds in one round on a single proposal. Overall, we seek to balance the expected climate benefits with the desire to trial this approach in a diversity of situations.
Responses to this RFP are due June 7, 2024. Evaluation of proposals and decisions will be made within approximately one month or around July 10, 2024.
We do not expect landowners to conduct an analysis of greenhouse gas outcomes by themselves. Any data or assistance that landowners or managers can provide NEFF and its partners/subcontractors to support the measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification of greenhouse gas outcomes from project activities is welcome and will be considered as part of applications for this RFP. Especially for the Design Phase round, willingness and capacity to collaborate on measurement ad modeling will be considered in proposal evaluation.
For this RFP, the details of the measurement and monitoring protocols will be worked out collaboratively by NEFF and the landowner/manager. A pre-treatment inventory will be required to demonstrate that the proposed practices are applicable for the proposed area. A post-treatment inventory of the treated area will also be required in order to verify that practices were implemented to the specifications agreed upon and to provide data for modeling of future carbon benefits. NEFF will not require ongoing monitoring beyond these two inventories, but applicants are encouraged to propose ways they can contribute to NEFF’s efforts to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of this program, including through ongoing monitoring where practicable.
Yes; an entity such as a forest management company can apply to participate in the program as an “operator,” rather than an owner, as long as the operator has a written agreement with the landowner authorizing them to manage the land. In this case it is the operator who would share information about its ownership structure. The entity that establishes records with USDA Farm Service Agency will receive the payments for the practices completed.
No. If the evaluation committee selects your application to participate in NEFF’s Large Commercial Forest Landowner Incentive Program: Round 1 Design Phase, and you learn that the program is not compatible with your companies’ operations, then you have the option to withdraw your application.
NEFF is running its incentive program for family forest owners in four states with American Forest Foundation through its Family Forest Carbon Program, will launch an incentive program for smaller-acreage landowners in southern New England in fall 2024, and our Tribal Nations incentive program has begun and will unfold through 2024.
However, the Climate-Smart Commodities project doesn’t just work with landowners—we’re also building market demand for climate-smart forest products; providing climate-smart forestry incentives and training to foresters and loggers; and engaging in monitoring, verification, and reporting to document and ensure the project’s additive carbon benefit.
This pilot project is a key first step for NEFF’s 30 Percent Solution, which aims to fully leverage regional forests in the fight against climate change, including by significantly expanding the use of NEFF’s own approach to climate-smart forestry, Exemplary Forestry. This solution could pull enough CO2 from the atmosphere to provide 30 percent of the emissions reductions we need to meet the region’s net-zero goals.
