Georgia offers carbon credits for mass timber projects. How it works.
Georgia is the first state in the nation to create a carbon registry program that rewards sustainable building practices with carbon credits, with goals to boost both the state’s environment and economy equally.
And while only one building project has made it to the registry since the program started, those who helped start the program are confident more developments in the Peach State will start taking advantage of the program soon.
The Georgia Carbon Sequestration Registry, first developed in 2008, was originally created to help landowners certify the carbon stored in their forests. But as Georgia kept rapidly growing, lawmakers saw an opportunity to expand the registry’s impact, changing it to allow for financial incentive for constructing developments with mass timber.
In 2021, legislation passed that gave the Georgia Forestry Commission a year to write the protocol for the amended carbon registry. The legislation required that an eight person committee with diverse expertise would write the protocol, including an architect, a carbon life cycle assessment specialist, a developer, a professor of engineering and a professor of forestry, among others.
“The extension really became logical,” said Rep. Todd Jones (R-25), who was instrumental in creating the amendment. “We want to be able to encourage not just that industry, but also encourage that industry in the products that they create, in terms of the expansion of buildings and construction within our state. So the natural, logical way to do that was to extend it into the registry.”
Jones was instrumental due to his background working in the carbon market, which allows entities to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by buying carbon credits — a certificate that can be traded and represents one metric ton of CO₂ equivalent that has been avoided, reduced or removed from the atmosphere.
In the early 2000s, before becoming a legislator, Jones was involved in a myriad of different renewable energy and carbon reduction programs in developing countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico.
“I’ve traded literally hundreds of millions of offsets around the world in my ‘real world job’ years ago,“ Jones said. “It proved to be very successful, ... and it definitely gave me a good understanding that there is 100% an ability to do good (environmentally) and do well (economically).”
To register a building project with the Georgia Carbon Sequestration Registry, the building must be constructed in Georgia after Jan. 1, 2021, use sustainable building materials and demonstrate lower embodied carbon compared to the baseline set by the protocol written by the Sustainable Building Material Technical Advisory Committee, according to the legislation.
So far, only one building has been registered, 619 Ponce in Atlanta, which was built by Jamestown L.P.
“As Georgia’s first Georgia-grown mass timber building built using a regional supply chain, 619 Ponce had already undergone extensive work to assess and quantify its carbon benefits,” said Troy Harris, Jamestown’s managing director of timberland and innovative wood products and one of the eight committee members who wrote the protocol. “In our case, the main incentive was a measured opportunity to tell the building’s unique story and highlight the sustainability aspects of the development.”
Since Jamestown registered 619 Ponce, the Georgia Forestry Foundation has introduced an accelerator program that offers financial and technical assistance to developers exploring mass timber, which could be helpful for others pursuing similar initiatives, according to Harris.
“The registry helps us convey our carbon reduction efforts through consistent protocols established by the State, ensuring developers calculate their carbon benefits uniformly.” Harris said. “With Georgia’s Carbon Registry backed by the State, developers are held to consistent, high standards when issuing credits. This fosters trust, ensures fairness, and sets a precedent for truly sustainable practices across the industry.”
But the Georgia Forestry Commission is confident there will be more participants.
“We have one completed and several under construction now that are interested in participating,” said Devon Dartnell, Georgia Forestry Commission’s director of forest services, and the man who was tasked with heading up the committee to write the protocol for the carbon registry. “We’re active, the registry is open, and we’re engaging with potential participants, educating them about the protocol.”
For example, the to-be-renovated Middle Georgia Regional Airport, which is being built of mass timber, would be eligible.
Will others copy Georgia’s idea?
Dartnell said other states have reached out to him, asking for the protocol and information regarding the protocol, and that he’s happy to share.
“It’s not a competitive thing,” Dartnell said. “We’re not trying to beat other states. We’re happy to share. It’s a positive thing for everybody in the forest products value chain, from the timber land owners to the mills. And it’s a good thing for the environment, the fact that these sustainable buildings are much more carbon neutral than our conventional steel and concrete buildings.”
Jamestown L.P. has development projects across the country and the world, and they hope to see more protocols like this one be adopted in other places.
“Not only do we see this as setting the benchmark in Georgia, but we’re also hopeful that similar protocols will be adopted by other states to help encourage broader industry adoption and standardization,” Dartnell said.
How does the registry work?
The protocol was completed in January 2022 and focused on awarded credits based on two main components: embedded and embodied carbon.
Credits are awarded for embedded carbon based on how many tons of carbon are stored in that building through eligible building materials, such as mass timber. For example, if a building is constructed with mass timber instead of concrete and steel, it qualifies, and the amount of carbon stored in the lumber is measured.
One carbon credit is given for every metric ton of carbon stored in the wood, which is assumed to stay in the building for at least 100 years, since most commercial buildings last that long or longer, according to Dartnell.
“For example, if a building is built out of mass timber instead of concrete with steel beams and things for the construction, they’re eligible,” Dartnell said. “Then we measure the amount of carbon stored in that lumber. One carbon credit is awarded for every metric ton of carbon stored in the lumber, which is assumed to stay in that building for at least the life of the building, which is assumed to be for at least 100 years, because most commercial buildings last over 100 years. And history shows us that commercial buildings built out of wood significantly last longer than that.”
Another factor that carried weight in awarding embedded carbon credits is that large timber elements, such as CLT walls and glulam beams, could be disassembled and reused in other buildings at the end of the original building’s life, meaning it’s likely that the carbon will be kept out of the atmosphere for several centuries, Dartnell explained.
Credits for embodied carbon are based on the amount of avoided emissions by using wood as opposed to other building materials.
Producing steel or cement involves mining raw materials, transporting them and using large amounts of energy to process them, all of which generates significant emissions. By using wood, those emissions are avoided.
“All of those emissions are avoided by using a tree that grows itself,” Dartnell said. “We add the emissions involved with the extraction of the iron ore or the limestone for Portland cement (with) the amount of emissions involved with the transportation of the raw material to the factory. Then we quantify the amount of emissions at the factory manufacturing that steel or Portland cement. And then finally, we calculate the amount of emissions involved with moving it from the factory to the job site, and award carbon credits for all the reduction in emissions involved with what they call embodied carbon.”
To measure this, there are several validated tools, like life cycle assessment tools, approved by the Georgia Forestry Commission that are available to developers to quantify the emissions saved at every stage, according to Dartnell.
Jones said they wanted to assure the credits were high quality and trustworthy, so clear rules were put in place.
First, they required a solid baseline, which is the estimated level of emissions that would have occurred without the project. This is important because one can only claim to reduce emissions if they’re being lowered below what would have happened without the project.
Second, they required an additionality threshold, which means projects would want to go forward because of the financial incentive from selling carbon credits. If the project would have happened anyway without that financial incentive, then it doesn’t count for a credit.
Essentially, this is a way to measure the true impact of a project beyond what would have happened naturally
Lastly, they wanted to make sure the projects came with real co-benefits aside from marketing components.
They also required both validation, which is a review before the project starts, and verification, which is a review after the project is completed, by independent third parties, Jones said.
By focusing on these things, Jones was confident in producing a high-quality, respected carbon offset program, according to Jones.
“We didn’t want to create something where people would say, ‘it sounds good, but it’s really just smoke and mirrors,’” Jones said. “We wanted to make sure that we were establishing a registry that people — third parties, people out of the country, people in the country — would say ‘this the highest quality carbon offset that you can possibly invest in.’”
This story was originally published May 16, 2025 at 10:20 AM.
