Impact
How Methane Revenue Changes Project Economics
Demand for high-integrity forest credits exceeds the available project supply. Many projects cannot raise upfront capital because expected returns are low and uncertain. SelvaFlux measures methane uptake through tree bark. An approved crediting method could add project revenue and lower the break-even credit price. The calculations and sources are below.
How the numbers connect
From Methane Uptake to Project Supply
| Step | Current basis (GWP100) | If GWP* is approved | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1Methane we measure in tree bark | 0.45 tCO₂e/ha/yr | 2.15 tCO₂e/ha/yr | science |
| 2Added to a project's credit revenue | +2 to 9% | +10 to 40% | economics |
| 3Lower credit price to break even | −$1 to $4/t | −$4 to $14/t | bankability |
| 4More reforestation (elasticity near 1.0) | +2 to 9% | +10 to 40% | supply |
| 5Additional removals at full adoption | ~0.1 to 2.1 GtCO₂e/yrlower end is today, upper end is GWP* | impact | |
Each row links to where the number is derived. The at-scale figure (row 5) uses a published supply elasticity as a conservative basis; a spatially-explicit bankability model now in development will replace it with a bottom-up supply curve.
The bottleneck
Finance Is the Bottleneck
Demand for high-integrity forest credits exceeds the available supply. About$10.1 billionwas committed to nature-restoration credits in 2025 (MSCI), and only about half of nature-restoration projects reach MSCI’s BBB rating. When the Symbiosis coalition ran its first call, 228 projects applied and 2 were contracted; most had no more than a feasibility study.
The constraint is the cost and risk of building high-integrity projects. Once real costs are loaded (field MRV, community revenue sharing, land opportunity cost, tenure work), a reforestation project that looks profitable on paper is not viable at $25 per tonne, and the capital spent years before the first credit is hard to raise.
Step 2 · Economics
Methane Becomes Revenue
In tropical forests, tree bark removes about 16.8 kg CH₄/ha/yr, which currently credits as 0.45 tCO₂e/ha/yr under GWP100, or about 2 to 9%of the carbon a reforestation project sequesters (Cook-Patton et al. 2020 for the carbon, our 2024 Nature paper for the methane), so it adds the same few percent to the project’s carbon revenue. Under GWP*, a metric better suited to short-lived gases but not yet approved for crediting, the same uptake is worth about 10 to 40%.
The methane credit is an ongoing sink that lasts only while the forest does: methane is short-lived, so if the forest is lost the sink stops and atmospheric methane rebalances upward. It therefore carries the same permanence buffer and leakage as the project’s biomass credits.
| Quantity | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Methane uptake measured | 16.8 kg CH₄/ha/yr | our Nature 2024 study (tropical, upper end) |
| Current crediting basis (GWP100 = 27) | 0.45 tCO₂e/ha/yr | 16.8 kg × GWP100 |
| Credited under GWP* (not yet approved) | ~2.15 tCO₂e/ha/yr | GWP* establishment basis, 128× over 20 years |
| Uplift on a project's carbon revenue | 2 to 9% today; 10 to 40% GWP* | 0.45 ÷ biomass sequestration ~7 to 11 tCO₂/ha/yr (Cook-Patton et al. 2020) |
Step 3 · Bankability
Revenue Lowers the Break-Even Price
Whether a project gets financed turns on a threshold: the credit price at which it clears a 12% return. For a real-world assisted-natural-regeneration project (capex $520/ha, fully-loaded operating costs, net sequestration 3.32 tCO₂/ha/yr), that break-even price is about $48/t with no methane. Bark methane lowers it to roughly $44 to $47/t today (a 2 to 9% revenue uplift), and to about $34 to $44/t if GWP* is adopted (10 to 40%). Projects sitting between those prices and the market move from unfinanceable to financeable.
| Project case | Revenue uplift | Break-even price (12% IRR) | IRR at $50/t |
|---|---|---|---|
| No methane | None | $48/t | 12.8% |
| Bark methane under GWP100 | +2 to 9% | $44 to $47/t | 13 to 15% |
| Bark methane under GWP* (10 to 40%) | +10 to 40% | $34 to $44/t | 15 to 20% |
Active planting (capex ~$1,500/ha) is structurally harder, with a break-even of roughly $80 to $116/t even with methane, so the model is strongest for assisted natural regeneration and mixed-method projects. These figures do not assume any digital-MRV or shepherd-model cost reduction.
Step 4 · Supply
Revenue Changes Forest-Project Supply
A revenue uplift acts like a higher carbon price, and forest supply responds to it: reforestation rises roughly one-for-one with the revenue a project earns. Busch et al. 2019 put the elasticity around 1.0 (range about 0.5 to 2.0), and Favero & Austin 2026 find it stronger still at low prices. So a 2 to 9% revenue uplift produces roughly that much more reforestation, and more under GWP*. The effect is largest near the bankability threshold, where a small change decides whether a project gets financed.
Step 5 · Impact
How Much This Could Remove
In the near term, SelvaFlux could help finance removals at megatonne scale. Applied across all reforestable land globally (about 195 Mha, or 1.5 to 2.2 GtCO₂/yr), the same supply response adds on the order of 0.1 to 2.1 GtCO₂e/yr, the lower end at today’s GWP100 and the upper end under GWP*. Reforestation is about 15% of the nature-based wedge that can take 0.1 to 0.3°C off peak warming (Girardin et al. 2021), and removals delivered before that peak do the most to lower it.
Lower bound
GWP100 uplift 4% · reforestation 1.48 GtCO₂/yr · elasticity 1.0
4% more reforestation → ~0.1 GtCO₂e/yr
Upper bound
GWP* uplift 40% · reforestation 2.2 GtCO₂/yr · elasticity 2.0
much more reforestation → ~2.1 GtCO₂e/yr
The lower bound uses conservative assumptions (today’s GWP100 and an elasticity of 1.0); the upper bound uses GWP* and the high end of the elasticity range.
Estimation methods
Supply Elasticity and Project-Level Modeling
The supply-elasticity estimate describes how total reforestation changes with revenue. The bankability model estimates which individual projects cross the financing threshold. A supply curve aggregates those project break-even prices. We use one method at a time to avoid counting the same effect twice.
For the at-scale number today we use the macro elasticity, because it already integrates across the full range of sites, which no single project type can. We are building our own spatially-explicit bankability model across the tropical reforestation map, running the project-level economics over real growth rates, opportunity costs, and land types. It will replace the borrowed elasticity with a bottom-up supply curve of our own.
What we do not change
We Do Not Fix the Baseline
Avoided-deforestation credits lost much of their value because of weak baselines and counterfactuals, the question of whether the forest would have been lost anyway. Methane measurement does not resolve that problem. A methane credit carries the same additionality as every other credit a project earns, so a weak baseline makes the methane claim weak too, however precisely the flux is measured.
SelvaFlux requires partner projects to meet applicable baseline and additionality standards. Direct methane measurement does not establish those conditions. The calculations on this page address only the effect of added methane revenue.
How we calculate this
Assumptions and Sources
Full working, including the project cash-flow model, is set out in a separate calculation note. The results here are illustrative figures under the stated assumptions, and should not be read as forecasts of what a SelvaFlux project will deliver.
- Reforestation base rate: 1.48 GtCO₂/yr cost-effective (Griscom 2017 via Girardin 2021), up to 2.2 GtCO₂/yr biophysical across ~195 Mha (Fesenmyer 2025).
- Elasticity: ~1.0 central, ranging ~0.5 to 2.0 per Busch's salience sensitivity; stronger at low prices per Favero & Austin 2026.
- Project economics: assisted natural regeneration, capex $520/ha, fully-loaded operating costs, gross sequestration 4.5 → net 3.32 tCO₂/ha/yr (18% buffer, 10% leakage), 30-year life, 12% discount.
- Bark methane is buffered and leaked like biomass: it is an ongoing sink that reverses if the forest is lost, so it is not a permanent, buffer-free removal.
- Revenue uplift spans the GWP100 base case (2 to 9%) through GWP* upside (10 to 40%). GWP* is not yet registry-approved.
- dMRV and shepherd-model cost reductions are not assumed here; they would improve the economics further if realized.
Sources
References
- Gauci, V. et al. (2024). Global atmospheric methane uptake by upland tree woody surfaces. Nature 631. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07592-w
- Allen, M. R. et al. (2018). A solution to the misrepresentations of CO₂-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants under ambitious mitigation. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 1. doi:10.1038/s41612-018-0026-8
- Busch, J. et al. (2019). Potential for low-cost carbon dioxide removal through tropical reforestation. Nature Climate Change 9. doi:10.1038/s41558-019-0485-x
- Favero, A. & Austin, K. G. (2026). Charting our forest future: national supply curves for forest-based CO₂ mitigation. npj Climate Action 5. doi:10.1038/s44168-026-00335-9
- Fesenmyer, K. A. et al. (2025). Addressing critiques refines global estimates of reforestation potential for climate change mitigation. Nature Communications. doi:10.1038/s41467-025-59799-8
- Girardin, C. A. J. et al. (2021). Nature-based solutions can help cool the planet, if we act now. Nature 593, 191 to 194. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-01241-2
- Pacheco, P., Beatty, C. & Patel, J. (2024). An economic view on the costs and benefits of forest restoration. In Restoring Forests and Trees for Sustainable Development, Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/9780197683958.003.0009
- West, T. A. P. et al. (2023). Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation. Science 381. doi:10.1126/science.ade3535
- Tang, Y. et al. (2025). Tropical forest carbon offsets deliver partial gains amid persistent over-crediting. Science 390. doi:10.1126/science.adw4094
- MSCI Carbon Markets (2025). Investment and offtake trends in the global carbon credit market. https://www.msci.com/data-and-analytics/carbon-markets