more land and trees added to carbon offsets project

One late fall Friday in 2022, close to 40 volunteers from Chevron, Restore the Earth Foundation and the local community dug into the rich south Louisiana soil to plant bald cypress seedlings.

Chevron Land Representative Danielle Brocato was one of the volunteers. Just like the trees that she helped plant, she is a south Louisiana native.

“I love this place and have lived here my whole life,” she said. “The idea of restoring the native landscape for our kids is a big deal.”

Our support for the reforestation project is growing. We have funded millions more trees to restore thousands more acres. These thousands of acres join land already set aside in St. Charles Parish to help reforest the area. The project is expected to generate carbon offsets, a verified reduction or removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Bald cypress trees are Louisiana’s state tree. Chevron’s partnership provides more area for these treasured trees as well as wildlife.

These trees and the habitat they support help native plants and animals thrive. The restored forest is also expected to help provide a natural land buffer to mitigate flooding and damage from storms and hurricanes.

We’ve been working with Restore the Earth Foundation, a nonprofit that restores forests and wetlands, to plant 1.7 million trees on 8,800 acres of land in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) owns the land and will manage the reforested area.

The recent expansion of Chevron’s support:

• Adds the intent to plant approximately 2 million trees to the original 1.7 million for a total of roughly 3.7 million trees.
• Broadens the reforestation area, adding 10,000 acres to the original 8,800, for a total of 18,800 acres.

Amy Moss-Russell, offsets product owner for Chevron New Energies, has been working with Restore the Earth on the reforestation project from the beginning.

“Our first planting was successful, leading Restore the Earth to identify this additional acreage and the LDWF to recognize the additional value we could bring to restoring the public lands,” she said. “This expansion also helps improve our returns on this lower carbon project. It represents mutually beneficial opportunities we can find when we’re working together.”

Nature can help abate emissions that we cannot abate ourselves.

“Offsets are an important part of the business,” said Barbara Harrison, Chevron’s vice president of Offsets and Emerging. “They will continue to play a complementary role in our efforts to lower the carbon intensity of our existing assets and products. Projects like this demonstrate our long-term commitment to safely delivering higher returns and lower carbon.”

Chevron’s relationship with Restore the Earth is a genuine collaboration to restore, protect and preserve the environment.

“It's not like Chevron just writes a check and leaves, but they actually get in the mud with us, not only as volunteers to help plant trees, but also in shaping and deploying these projects as collaborative partners,” said Taylor Marshall, Restore the Earth’s Director of Partnerships and Programs.