Up to $20 million is available in grants to “facilitate the creation of new, innovative markets for carbon credits,” USDA announced. It says carbon markets provide additional revenue sources for producers who practice soil and water conservation. About half of the money is earmarked for environmental markets and conservation finance projects that involve producers. USDA said pre-proposals are due by Feb 24. USDA will winnow those submissions to select the groups that submit a full-fledged proposal.
In earlier years, USDA used the Conservation Innovation Grant program to aid development of the basic structure of environmental markets. It says that in 2015, it seeks projects that “build on these efforts by maturing and scaling markets and accelerating efforts to leverage private capital and investment in private lands conservation.” As examples, USDA said it used the grants to help create a program, run by the Electric Power Research Institute, that will pay farmers in the Ohio River basin for water quality credits and a project, led by the Delta Institute, that sells nitrous oxide credits on Midwestern corn fields.