INDIANAPOLIS — A bill that would bring a carbon market to Indiana has passed out of committee and is now headed for the Indiana Senate floor.
Senate Bill 373, introduced by Sen. Sue Glick, R-LaGrange, would establish a framework for a voluntary carbon offset market in Indiana. The bill would empower the state to create a program where farmers or private landowners could get paid for sequestering greenhouse gases in their soil.
On Feb. 1, S.B. 373 passed out of the Senate Natural Resources Committee by an 8-0 vote. The bill has one co-authors and two sponsors, two Republicans and two Democrats. It was first introduced Jan. 12.
Indiana does not have a carbon market in place, meaning that any corporations wishing to purchase carbon credits to offset their emissions have to do so in an out-of-state market. Glick’s bill would change that by offering companies a way to invest in conservation and environmental efforts in Indiana, as well as ensuring Hoosier farmers are able to receive monetary compensation for implementing regenerative farming practices.
Glick describes S.B. 373 as a “forward thinking” bill that would make Indiana a leader among Midwest states in adopting a market-based approach to reducing greenhouse emissions.
“There are major corporations in the United States such as Amazon and Microsoft, Phillips and British Petroleum that are purchasing these carbon offset credits,” Glick said. “They’re looking for markets, for people who have these forested areas and farming practices in place, and they will pay for the opportunity to list that land or those acreages as an offset.
“These companies can only reduce their carbon footprint so far, so they buy these offsets to show that they’ve tried to reduce their carbon footprint to zero,” Glick continued. “They will pay money to farmers and foresters for those tracks of land.”
Carbon sequestration, the process of storing carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere, is one of the most common and affordable ways to offset carbon emissions. Many of the regenerative practices farmers employ, such as letting their fields lie fallow, planting cover crops or rotational grazing reduce greenhouse gas emissions by trapping carbon dioxide in the soil.
Some Hoosier farmers have adopted regenerative agriculture practices already as a way to improve soil health or prevent erosion, but the transition can incur steep up-front costs and take years before farmers see the benefits and savings. Glick says a carbon market would help improve farmers’ bottom lines for their carbon-reducing actions.
“It allows the landowners to recover some money for their investment and to assist them in maintaining those farming and forestry practices that take carbon out of the atmosphere and puts oxygen back in,” she said. “It’s an overall benefit to everyone. It’s a win-win situation.”
Glick’s bill would require the lieutenant governor to adopt rules and standards for the program, as well as establish an advisory council of scientists and agricultural and forestry experts. Once up and running, the program would permit the certification of technical advisers and verifiers that would assist farmers or forest owners in implementing climate-friendly practices.
Ultimately, approved acreage would be published on a list where companies or nonprofit entities with an interest in generating carbon offsets would have the ability to purchase them.
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