Impact
What Better Economics Does for Forests
High-integrity forest projects have buyers waiting, but many never get built because the upfront capital is hard to raise against thin, uncertain returns. SelvaFlux measures the methane forests absorb through tree bark, a revenue stream no methodology credits today, which improves those returns and helps more projects get financed. This page shows how each number connects, with the full calculations and sources.
How the numbers connect
From Measurement to Impact
| Step | Today (GWP100) | If GWP* is approved | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1Methane we measure in tree bark | 0.45 tCO₂e/ha/yr | 2.1 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
The carbon market’s trust problems fall hardest on low-integrity credits. High-integrity forest credits are in a different position: demand outstrips supply, with about $6 to 7 billion in committed corporate capital waiting for project-ready supply (MSCI 2025). When the Symbiosis coalition ran its first call, 185 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 does not pencil out 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. That is 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, not a permanent removal. It 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 | Gauci et al. 2024 (tropical, upper end) |
| Credited today (GWP100 = 27) | 0.45 tCO₂e/ha/yr | 16.8 kg × GWP100 |
| Credited under GWP* (not yet approved) | ~2.1 tCO₂e/ha/yr | GWP* establishment basis, ~4.7× GWP100 |
| 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 | — | $48/t | 12.8% |
| Bark methane today (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 Becomes Forest
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 unlocks roughly that much more reforestation, more under GWP*, and likely more still near the bankability threshold, where a small change flips a project from no capital to financed.
Step 5 · Impact
What This Adds Up To
Near-term, the removals SelvaFlux can directly help finance are megatonne-scale, and all of them are additional. Applied across the full global reforestation opportunity (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 before the peak matter most.
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 stacks conservative assumptions (today’s GWP100, elasticity 1.0); the upper bound stacks GWP* and the high end of the elasticity range.
Two views
Two Ways to Size the Impact
There are two ways to estimate the impact, and they describe the same thing. The supply elasticity above is the macro view: it summarizes how the whole opportunity responds to revenue. The bankability model is the micro view: it shows, project by project, which ones cross the financing threshold. A supply curve is the aggregate of project break-even prices, so the bankability model is the microfoundation of the elasticity. We use one or the other, never both stacked, so the impact is not double-counted.
We lean on the macro elasticity for the at-scale number today, because it already integrates across the full range of sites, which a single project type cannot. We are building a spatially-explicit bankability model across the tropical reforestation map that will run the project-level economics over real growth rates, opportunity costs, and land types, and replace the borrowed elasticity with a bottom-up supply curve of our own.
What we do not change
The Baseline Is a Separate Matter
Avoided-deforestation credits lost much of their value because of weak baselines and counterfactuals, whether the forest would have been lost anyway, not because of measurement. SelvaFlux does not change that. 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.
We partner only with high-integrity projects, where those baseline problems do not arise, and we are rigorous and transparent about the measurement. What SelvaFlux changes is the economics, which is what the calculations on this page set out.
How we calculate this
Assumptions and Sources
Every figure here is traceable to a published source or an arithmetic step. Full working, including the project cash-flow model, is in the calculation note that backs this page. All results are illustrative units under stated assumptions, not forecasts of what SelvaFlux 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 (GWP*). 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
- Brancalion, P. H. S. et al. (2024). An economic view on the costs and benefits of forest restoration. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198881711.003.0017
- West, T. A. P. et al. (2023). Action needed to make carbon offsets from tropical forest conservation work. 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. msci.com