AEP Carbon Sequestration and Offsets

• American Electric Power is participating in forest conservation and reforestation projects. By replanting degraded areas, or protecting land that would otherwise be logged, the company is helping to sequester millions of tons of carbon.
  
  
• AEP, under DOE’s Climate Challenge Tree Planting Project, has planted 21,914 acres with nearly 19 million mixed hardwood and conifer trees at a cost of approximately $5.7 million. Projected CO₂ sequestration is 4.7 million metric tons over the term of the project. In a separate initiative in Louisiana, AEP has planted 9,784 acres with nearly 3 million bottomland hardwood trees at a cost of $6.25 million. Projected carbon sequestration is over 4.4 million metric tons.
  
  
• AEP is a founding member of PowerTree Carbon Company, LLC, a voluntary carbon sequestration initiative. PowerTree, which has 25 member companies, will invest $3.4 million for reforestation of over 3,800 acres of bottomland hardwood projects in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The project will sequester over 2 million tons of CO₂ over the 100-year project term.
  
  
• AEP’s Mountaineer Plant is the site for a $4.2 million carbon sequestration research project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and a consortium of public and private sector participants. Scientists from Battelle Memorial Institute lead this climate change mitigation research project, which will also involve researchers from several other partnering organizations and universities. This project is obtaining the data required to better understand the capability of deep saline aquifers for storage of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
  
  
• AEP is a member of a consortium that is proposing to enter into an agreement with the DOE on FutureGen. FutureGen is a $1 billion project that may lead to the world’s first nearly emission-free hydrogen and electricity production plant from coal, while capturing and disposing of CO₂ in geologic formations
  
  
• AEP is a participating member of the UtiliTree Carbon Company. UtiliTree is a consortium of 41 utilities organized by the Edison Electric Institute to invest in a portfolio of forestry projects that manage GHG emissions, particularly CO₂. A $3.2 million investment in eight domestic and two international projects will capture over 3 million tons of CO₂ over the life of these project.
  
  
• AEP is working with the MIT Energy Laboratory as part of a consortium researching the environmental impacts, technological approaches, and economic issues associated with carbon sequestration. The MIT research focuses on efforts to better understand and reduce the cost of carbon separation and sequestration.

To view carbon sequestration and offsets programs of all BELC members, visit What's Being Done in the Business Community section of this site.