Forests of the Future: Innovative Management, Shared Stewardship and Opportunities for Carbon Offsets in Alaska

Severity was so high that conifer seed source and hardwood roots were compromised. Drought following fire can limit regeneration. Our masked year seed production of white spruce might not have coincided with the fire regeneration. White spruce don't produce seed every year, and if the fire happened in a non-masked year, then the site might have greened up and precluded natural reseeding of spruce. Alaskan wildfire history from 2000 to 2024 is about 9 million acres of forest that have burned.

This is— continues to be a challenging problem globally with forests. Aforestation potential in Alaska interior regulatory environment allows for carbon projects on state lands. SB 48 and its Subsequent regulations, 111 AAC 78, authorizes the Department of Natural Resources to develop state-led offset projects and lease lands, state lands up to 55 years to private parties for carbon purposes. There are approximately 600,000 acres just in the interior of treatable previously forested areas suitable for ARR. These are not successfully regenerating for a variety of reasons.

There's a significant amount of trees that could be replanted. Carbon prices from North American AR projects are strong and in high demand. If all 600,000 acres were treated, potential revenue from offsets over 20 years could exceed $3 billion, and there's more opportunities to 2 in the Southeast. Um, the benefit to the state of Alaska is low risk to the state on privately funded ARR projects, revenue sourced through lease fees and revenue sharing from carbon offset sales on lands that are not currently productive forests. State retains ownership of the replanted and employment opportunities.

A tree nursery to grow trees is needed in the state of Alaska. Equipment contractors to prepare the sites for planting and 10 following planting opportunities. Helicopter operators in May and then June to transport trees and planters. Seasonal employment for youth for tree planting. It would take about 5,000 tree planters to plant the trees required in Alaska.

Each year.

So those are the opportunities on the ARR, Trevor, which I think is a key opportunity. I could talk about sawmills and all the rest too, which we could do later. Yeah, well, we'll have plenty of opportunity to get into some of those other topics, but thank you, Rick. It sounds like there's definitely opportunity there, particularly with the afforestation, reforestation, revegetation type projects. We're talking big numbers in terms of acreage that's available, but we're also probably talking about significant investment on behalf of the state and whatever private sector developer we might partner with there.

But thanks for that overview. And Laura, again, you're representing research, some fascinating research that's been done in Finland, which is a very different, some would say much more mature forestry sector than what we're working with here in Alaska. I believe you came prepared with a few slides to walk us through what that looks like and maybe compare and contrast that with Alaska. I will present that. Let you take over the presentation.

Yes, yes, and let me know if I'm taking too much time. Sometimes happens. Yes. You're fine on time. Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm sure with the others we are.

I will first just take the quick quick opportunity to say a couple of words of the Finnish Environment Institute where I work. So, Kai already briefly maybe mentioned, we are research and development center, and we are under the Finland's Ministry of the Environment and also partly under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, but mainly working together with the Ministry of the Environment. And, yeah, and we are government-owned. And we provide research information, expert services for several different issues related to the environment and natural resources. And we have been divided to this kind of solutions unit— units, so they're units but called solutions.

I personally work in the climate solutions and cooperate a lot also with the circular economy solutions unit, but then we have built environment solutions, nature solutions, particularly focusing on the biodiversity-related questions and marine and freshwater solutions. And we collaborate a lot with universities, other research institutes, and public organizations. And I'll put this all there at once. So we are located in 4 different locations in Finland, but most of us, like myself as well, work in Helsinki, in the capital of Finland, in our main office. And we are about 700 people altogether, a bit under that.

And yeah, and we work in a networked way both domestically and internationally, always trying to establish international contacts as well. And we are working with a wide range of stakeholders, so policymakers from different levels of government, and then business and industry and of course citizens as well in certain issues. And yeah, and of course science and research networks are our important partners. So there are a few words about that, and I will then go to this actual topic. So just to give you a bit of background on Finland, as you maybe don't know our small country so that well, so we are located in Northern Europe.

Between Sweden and Russia. We have a sparse population, long distances, although now that I say here so, I think you have even longer distances here in Alaska. This often applies in main parts of the world, but naturally not here in these Arctic areas that have even longer distances than we do. And over 3/4 of our land area, which corresponds to about 23.1 million hectares, is covered by forests. And yeah, and we have a relatively kind of specific role in energy security in that we are a small country next to Russia, and we have no fossil fuel— fossil energy resources of our own.

And that is also the role why wood as an energy source has always played a fairly important role. And previously, before the Ukraine war in particular, the Russian imports of fossil fuels played quite an important role in Finland with then-beat nuclear power and renewable energy sources, particularly hydropower and wood having their large contribution as well. And while biomass has played a major role in energy production in Finland, at the same time, the role of the land use land-use change and forestry, so the mullusief sector has been crucial in achieving the carbon neutrality, which is our national target, or has been our national target by 2035. And of course, also the EU climate policy is fairly ambitious. So, and just to show you as a continuation to the previous, that in the total energy consumption wood fuels are still playing quite a large role.

A lot of it comes from the— comes through the forest industry. But then in electricity production, their role is smaller, and their particular wind power has been growing a lot, and nuclear power has quite a large role as well, with hydropower playing a fairly large role as well. And in electricity generation, we are close to to the zero emissions already, but then in the total energy production there are of course oil, oil particularly also, also peat and natural gas still play some role. But yeah, but then to go to this question that we are really talking about today or what I'm presenting to you here today, this picture there on the left, on the right, Right side, sorry, shows you the development of the greenhouse gases on the land use change and forestry sector in— or land use and land use change and forestry sector in Finland. So like you can see, for a long time we had quite a large carbon sink, so these figures in minus are the carbon sinks or the carbon stored in in the— it says forestland here, but it of course means also the land, but then also the trees and all the other vegetation in the forests.

And for a long time, there was fairly stable level in it being a carbon sink. And these that are here above the zero, they are the— there are wetlands, then of course the cropland settlements grasslands, things that kind of areas where it's very difficult to get— where there are natural emissions coming. And then starting from about 2010, approximately, kind of following the fairly ambitious bioenergy policy that has taken place in the EU, carbon sink has been decreasing. And in 2018, for the first time, I think it was the— it was the— this sum of these was on the plus side. So even though we— even there still had a bit of carbon sink in the forests, it's the total has been an emission.

And now, during the past years, also the So also the total carbon sink in the forest lands is very, very small. There is still some carbon being captured in the forest, but then on the other hand, there are peatlands that are an emission source, and then also the savanna lands have been taking in less carbon than it used to be in the colder times. So there is the— impact of climate change, global warming is visible there. And then I just put this other one here in the— on the left side for you to see that it seems, and what is argued by experts, that this very much— this development follows the development that has happened in the bioenergy consumption. Particularly the solid wood fuel consumption in power plants has been increasing.

Yeah. Yeah, and there are many studies according to which if the harvesting of roundwood and forest residues had stayed in the level it was in the first decade of 2000, the sink— the average carbon sink would have stayed in about -15 megatons CO2 higher than what it is now, or what it turned out to be. And here, just two pictures on a recent study made for the government regarding the expected development of the greenhouse gas emissions until 2050. And these abbreviations there. I could have maybe left the other picture out.

This is with existing measures, and this is with additional measures. So we are presently somewhere here, and then this is what is aimed to happen by 2050. And, yeah, and the emission targets for the fossil emissions, they are— I mean, both emission targets are quite ambitious, but the fossil emissions, they have been— they are expected to continue decreasing. Now, presently, with the present government, their climate policy hasn't been so ambitious, so there's now— now the emissions have kind of stopped going down, but it is aimed that they will continue, and that we would, in that sense, close to zero by 2050, but because the LULUCF sector has now been— the sink there has been decreasing, it seems that we are not achieving the ambitious targets that Finland has, and this needs changes in the present politics. And also the carbon capture and utilization and storage technologies are— there are quite ambitious targets for them because of this, but we will maybe discuss that a bit more then later.

And I think, well, yeah, these I probably almost all said. These have to do with the EU land use sector policies. So there are certain levels set for 2021 to 2027. 2025, And then for the latter period of this decade. And for this first part, we should have reached 13.45 megatons CO2 sink, which Sweden naturally didn't reach.

And for the latter part, the sink could be a bit smaller, but of course, this both seem now impossible to— impossible to achieve. And this is, of course, posing now challenges to the government when thinking about how to solve this. And yeah, and as said, there are— we will need to look for these net-negative solutions, which can include the natural carbon sinks and then also the technical sinks. But it is still unclear what kind of— what we will need to pay for this, that we are not achieving these targets now, but it is quite sure that something in any case. Yeah, but I think this was all that I wanted to say on this, and we can then perhaps discuss this more later.

Thank you, Laura. And as we can see, sort of what I heard from Laura was that Alaska and Finland We certainly have some things in common. We're both Arctic. We're not a country, but we are an Arctic region. Finland's an Arctic region.

We both have massive boreal forests. Some very different things to think about, different challenges, and different approaches to management. We thought that would be an interesting contrast. Thank you for walking us through it, and we'll get into some of those other topics as we get into the question section here. Thanks, Laura.

So, you know, between the three of these folks, like I said, we've got a pretty incredible mix of perspectives up here. And at this point, I'd like to take advantage of that by jumping into some specific questions to spark a little more discussion amongst the panel here. Ashley, I'll go ahead and return to you again. In case you couldn't tell from the carbon, from the conversation thus far, carbon's entered the room, right? It's part of the conversation now.

And even though the state's still in the assessment phase, and we haven't yet launched a carbon project, we don't have anything to brag about quite yet, but we have the framework. So how do you see these things, how do you see these projects fitting into the Division of Forestry's traditional multiple-use framework?

Well, we do manage for multiple use and sustained yield. On our state forests, timber management is the primary statutory purpose, allowing other beneficial uses as well. So right now we're in the process of revising our state forest management plans to consider carbon offset projects, and that involves a public review process. So we've been working through it, and we have a completed revised plan for the Tanana Valley State Forest up by Fairbanks. We're in the public review draft phase of our Hayden State Forest Resource Management Area Plan.

And we just started scoping for the Southeast State Forest Management Plan. So we've, we have a lot of uses on our state forest, not simply timber. So carbon offset projects are another consideration, just like other multiple uses and similar to other multiple use considerations. There's, you know, can be some inherent tension in public perception of trade-offs between timber harvesting and other uses. So that's the purpose of the public process is to get public input on that and see how we can make these uses work together.

And as far as our role, we are a source of technical expertise for the Office of Project Management and Permitting as they're working through ideas. We have the background and experience with planting projects and just the logistics of forest management in Alaska to help make carbon offset projects, um, success—. Successful. As we all know, there are definite constraints to planting season in Alaska, for example, and what will grow here successfully. So we are looking forward to being a part of this in terms of being able to provide that expertise and make it work for Alaska.

Thanks, Ashley. And Ashley mentioned that they sort of— one of the many roles that Division of Forestry performs is to provide the sort of technical assistance that we need to make sure these projects work and that they're done right. And I can't emphasize how valuable they are and how great it is is to have somebody like Ashley to reach out to with some of the questions that we have as we stand up the program. Rick, we'll go ahead and turn to you next.

We already sort of touched base on the fact that you've got a long history and a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge in the industry side of things, in wood products side of things, but just recently within the last couple of years you've stood up Oreo Carbon Corporation and you've also purchased one of the largest carbon, forest carbon developers in North America, Finite Carbon, as you mentioned in your intro there. All that having been said, I really want to know a couple of things. One, what keeps you up at night when you think about carbon? And two, what do you see as the big opportunities there? What are you excited about with carbon, with that big, you know, with your acquisition of that new company, not a new company, Finite's been around for a long time, but new to you.

So thanks, Rick. Well, thanks, Trevor. Well, I would say the voluntary carbon markets keeps me up at night. They've been still evolving quite a lot, and a credit represents about 1 ton of CO2 avoided or sequestered. The current oversupply The oversupply of carbon credits, it has created a buyer's market, so it's been very challenging.

Um, but projects with higher quality credits, um, have been impacted too. However, the oversupply is expected to dry up in the next 18 to 24 months. Buyers are increasingly looking to lock up prices for multi-year deals, and interest in the carbon finance markets remain strong, uh, from landowners, governments, and different groups. Um, so the market is turning around, it's getting more positive. On the ARR side that I discussed earlier, that's very positive.

Forestry restoration is a big deal, um, reforesting areas that haven't grown back naturally is a big deal, and a lot of the large technology companies and others are very interested in, in those type of projects. Um, so there is, uh, that side of it is quite, quite encouraging. So we do see that carbon for forestry is part of the solution, in particular to help absorb more carbon emissions and create healthier forests. There's— when you look at it globally, there's a lot of deforestation going on globally, so North America is well positioned to increase its planting of forests and increase forest cover, with Alaska being a tremendous opportunity for the state. Governor Dunleavy has introduced some really positive plans for Alaska and We're very encouraged by them.

Thanks, Rick. And one of the things that Rick was sort of addressing head-on there is the reality of the fact that the voluntary carbon markets have been in a bit of a slump over the last couple of years. When we were drafting the legislation, SB 48, that became the suite— well, 2 out of the 3 carbon programs I showed you earlier.

The voluntary carbon market was really hopping. Immediately after that, it took a pretty big dip. There's a significant correction that happened, and it's still in a process of recovery. But there's a lot of optimism there as well, as we get closer to 2030. And, you know, 2030 being the goal that a lot of big companies, a lot of Fortune 500 companies, a lot of companies that plan to use carbon offsets to sort of close that gap between emissions reductions and carbon neutrality.

2030 Is the goal that they've set, and one of the only ways they're going to be able to get there is by purchasing carbon offsets. So the market's in a slump, but there's optimism that we're going to see a turnaround here as we get closer to 2030. So it may be a great time to be getting into it, right? Yeah, and I'd maybe just add that we've seen in 2026, a recovery already started. Uh, 2024 and 2025 were, um, pretty weak.

Absolutely, absolutely. Thanks for mentioning that. And one of the other, um, silver linings in the sort of correction that's happened over the last couple of years is that then there, there's really been a lot more scrutiny of projects, uh, particularly on the buyer side. Um, so along with that scrutiny has come a higher degree of integrity in these projects. They're being looked at under a closer microscope than they ever have before.

They've been seeking out ratings agencies that rate them similarly to the way that we rate financial mechanisms. And generally, the projects have just become a lot more robust and a lot more transparent. These are all good developments for an evolving industry like the voluntary carbon market. So there's definitely some silver linings there. Thanks, Rick.

And then Laura, we'll turn to you now.

As you mentioned, you've done a lot of research into other climate pathways and bioenergy and carbon capture and storage being one of them, or BECCS. How is that being talked about in Finland's climate management strategies? And how do you think, or does it have any practical relevance here in Alaska? Well, in Finland, yes, it is talked about quite a lot now, and also in the national plans we have fairly— one could even say fairly ambitious targets now for the— particularly for the carbon capture and storage. Also the carbon capture and utilization and then making of, for example, the synthetic fuels, the e-fuels like they are called.

That is also something that is being discussed, and there are a lot of companies interested in that, but of course the prices are also so far quite high. But yeah, but it seems also very obvious and has been presented also by our Natural Resource Institute of Finland, who is kind of the official maker of the land use sector scenarios, that we would need about 15% reduction approximately now during the next years in the harvests. And they are actually, from what I hear now, it almost is that in Finland, I think, there is discussion about these carbon markets, but it's— and some do that voluntarily, that they don't harvest their forests, and then they get some fee for that. But we have a lot of private forest owners. The forest ownership is scattered quite a lot, so it has also been suggested in different studies that we could be— that the government should perhaps be paying for forest owners to give them a— to kind of make— so that they can profit of not harvesting their forests.

But having said that, I mean, I don't see it's —so that the forest use or the bioenergy use wouldn't have a role, definitely. Especially when combined with the pulp and paper production or timber production, there are of course naturally then always like residues coming that of which part of them definitely can be used as an energy source or something else and also should be used. But yeah, yeah, but that is probably then one of the kind of the fields that you are thinking about also in Alaska, isn't it? That using part of the forest residue— forest— part of the wood in timber production, for example, and then it would of course naturally result then in residues that could also be used for something else such as an energy source. Absolutely.

You know, we have an opportunity like that to take essentially a waste product and turn it into power or energy or both. And maybe sequester some carbon in the process. Exactly. Yeah. Find another resource stream through carbon credits.

Exactly. Sounds like a win-win-win to me. So thanks for that. I hope Finland has a lot of success with it and we can follow, you know, sort of in step. So that's— Thus far we focused a lot on the carbon side of things.

I didn't want to wrap this up before we had a chance to talk a little more about timber harvest. I'll go ahead and bounce back to you, Ashley. The Division of Forestry recently entered into a shared stewardship agreement with the Forest Service. This is a pretty big deal. Been working on it for a long time.

Has some pretty long-term, pretty significant implications for forest management in Alaska. Perhaps you even access to timbers, timber sales. Maybe you can talk about that a little more and fill us in on the details of that shared stewardship and what that means going forward. We're really excited that we have a shared stewardship agreement with a 20-year timeframe that we have signed with the Forest Service, and this agreement builds on over a decade of work at this point where we've been working on Good Neighbor Authority timber sales, which allows the state to manage timber on National Forest lands and increase the pace and scale of restoration on those lands as well. So what this does on the ground is it increases the overall capacity and provides another source of continuity and consistency for timber sale management.

The goal is to increase the timber supply and to create efficiencies cross-boundary. And I'd like to point out that there's an opportunity for investment in young growth management in Southeast Alaska that shared stewardship is poised to help with. We're working with the Forest Service to develop a long-term contract and a reliable source of timber for an entity willing to invest in harvesting and processing that young growth material in the state. Great, thanks Ashley.

So yeah, you know, as Ashley mentioned in her opening remarks, State of Alaska does own significant forest lands, but we don't own necessarily the best forest lands when it comes to timber harvest. So the shared stewardship agreement where we can sort of co-manage some of these areas with the U.S. Forest Service could be a great opportunity for the state. So thank you for that. Rick, I'll go ahead and turn to you. You've mentioned that Alaska has some massive untapped forestry potential.

What's keeping us from getting there, particularly in terms of infrastructure or regulations or what do we need to do? What's the golden key to get us to that? Yeah, there's tremendous opportunity in Alaska, and I think Ashley mentioned the young growth or second growth forests that are coming up. I understand that could be up to 400 or 500 million board feet a year of timber from these forests. That could attract a state-of-the-art new sawmill.

For example, Alaska has a housing shortage. The United States has a housing shortage. Canada has housing shortage, Europe, the EU, MENA countries, globally there's big housing shortages, and people want more timber framed housing because it, it's a sustainable product, number one. Number two, it continues to absorb carbon in a house or a building as opposed to concrete or steel and and brick, and it absorbs better during earthquakes. So there's huge demand globally for lumber.

I would say Alaska is really well positioned. At one point Alaska used to harvest nearly a billion board feet of lumber from its forest timber annually. It's about 100 to 120 million board feet, I understand, currently. And a lot of that is being exported in the form of raw logs. We have the same issue in British Columbia where we export a lot of raw logs and it does create jobs unfortunately in other countries with low wages and so on.

So the opportunity for Alaska is simply increase the harvest, the potential for a new sawmill to supply domestic needs is very, very positive for Alaska. It would create a lot of jobs, harvesting jobs. Some of the residual products could go into oriented strand board instead of importing that in. And when I say importing, a lot of it's coming from the lower 48, but it's very expensive due to freight issues. And Alaska could also export export that product to global markets, in particular to Asia and so on.

So I think, um, the state of Alaska is very well positioned here. And I also think on sustainable aviation fuels, uh, there's a heavy buildup of diseased forests in Alaska. They're increasing the wildfire risk, which causes carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Healthy forest absorbs carbon, about 1 ton for every tree generally through its lifetime is absorbed, absorbing carbon. So the potential to help the environment, biodiversity, sustainable aviation fuel— this is the one of the busiest cargo airports in the world, and so I think there's a tremendous opportunity and to reduce that fuel load in the forest and at the same time have a stable and growing forest industry.

I think Alaska is really well positioned. I believe Governor Dunleavy is really focused on this and has some great ideas to help the state of Alaska to increase employment, reduce wildfire risk. Through all these opportunities. I really like what Rick ended on there with the idea of our potential for creating new things like sustainable aviation or synthetic aviation fuel. Fantastic talk earlier today about that— was that yesterday?

I'm starting to lose track. But this concept of taking some of our less desirable wood products, our fire-damaged and our beetle kill spruce and maybe turning that into a value-added product. That's a fantastic opportunity there. And in terms of what we can do with our more traditional durable wood products and how do we get more out there, well, I like what you said there too, if we build it, they will come, right? The markets aren't going anywhere, we just need to get the infrastructure built and get another sawmill up here and live happily Ever after.

Obviously not that easy, but those are key to getting us to where we really want to go. I would just add that the forests in Alaska contain white spruce, Sitka spruce, yellow cedar, and western red cedar. Those are highly specialized products, so the value-add opportunity, not just in the south, the synthetic aviation fuels, but but also for all— for exports into the global markets. Those are high-quality trees, and Alaska has lots of them. And you don't want disease to set in.

You want to, of course, have parks and set-aside areas, but at the same time, you want a sustainable forest industry. And I think to get to 400 or 500 million 4 feet a year is just half of what Alaska was about 3 decades ago and tremendous potential for jobs.

Agreed. Thanks, Rick. And I just looked at the time. We've only got a few minutes left here and I did promise to get to a little audience question and answer. So if you have some questions— anybody have a question, please raise your hand.

And if if you would. Nick, I see your hand's up. If you don't mind letting everybody know who you are before you jump into your question, we'll go ahead and get that answered. Thanks. Nick Fulford from Gaffney Klein.

As some of you may know, it was Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday last week. And he's well-known, obviously, for his many documentaries.

Planet Earth 3, you did this fantastic episode on forestry. And one of the points he made in that episode is that, you know, a forest is a home to millions of organisms, flora and fauna, in addition to the trees. So I'm curious, in addition to the afforestation and maintaining the trees themselves, are there any initiatives which are looking at the encouragement or the development of a habitat for other organisms that will both enhance the kind of carbon value of the forest and also prevent carbon emissions from things like spruce bark beetle and so forth. So I just wondered if there are any of these sort of secondary considerations which are likely to build on the carbon value. Thank you.

Thanks, Nick. Fantastic question. I'll say a couple of things. I'll pass it over to anybody that wants to take another stab at it. I am aware of those conversations happening.

I think they're probably something that falls under the broader rubric of co-benefits that you get out of a project. And I think the accounting part of that is pretty difficult when you're talking in a carbon offset project sense, like how do you account for for measuring carbon in a tree is relatively straightforward. Measuring how much a certain, say, non-tree species and the preservation of the habitat that they use those trees as, how much carbon does that sequester or how much carbon does it prevent from being emitted? And how do you account for that in your carbon accounting? I think that's a tricky one to do.

But these are the kinds of things that I believe registries and the people who develop the rule sets for the way these projects operate are being discussed. I just don't know how far we are from actually incorporating those things. Anybody else?

No? No? Okay. Yes, Sir David Attenborough, he's going quite strong at 100 years old, and done so much for nature. The, you know, with the changes in climate that are occurring, forests are changing with that.

And there's a lot more drought, there's more wildfires, and there's significantly more disease. But in terms of biodiversity, I think that's imperative in our forests. I'll give you an example. In Central Europe, Germany, for example, started planting more spruce forests because they were more valuable and less pine and less hardwoods. They ended up with a huge spruce bark beetle issue.

They're going back to restoring some of those forests with more mixed forests. Forests are also a home for medicinal purposes. A lot of medicines medicines come out of forests. One of the drugs in Canada that was found in an area called Jordan River— it happened to be our forest that I managed, but we didn't discover it, it was discovered by some scientists— was from the yew tree for the drug Taxol. So forests are you know, important from every aspect.

And— but they are changing. They are in decline. And we need to revive them. And for those purposes, for carbon purposes and so on. But the biodiversity is imperative or we could end up with challenges like that which happened in Europe.

Well said, Rick. Nick, thanks for the interesting question. I saw a microphone head over here. Sure. Thanks for a great conversation.

Steve Moilanen from Advanced Energy United. We're a business association of around 80 energy technology companies of various stripes. I was wondering, Rick, or maybe for everybody, if you could talk a little bit more about, call it, market dynamics in the voluntary carbon market space, really post-2030. I certainly take the point that maybe the next couple years are going to be a little bit hotter, or at least on the buyer side, and we can hope for that. But I wonder if you can sort of look past, sort of look around the corner a little bit past that point.

And I'm thinking about the fact that, for example, Microsoft is a member company of ours, and they have walked away in a big way from some of their VCM commitments. And my suspicion is that they and a lot of other hyperscalers are concerned around they're becoming infrastructure companies, they need to figure out how every last marginal dollar is spent, and all of a sudden VCM doesn't make as much sense for them. So, you know, how much of that is, you know, kind of them as specific actor as opposed to emblematic of what we might be seeing in the markets as a whole over the next number of years?

Rick, you want to start us off? Sure, I can start off with that. Microsoft was the majority buyer of voluntary carbon credits in the market. They were quite significant. And I understand they have been backing off from that, and that may have coincided with the market being weaker.

We've seen the market turning around, and we think that the— the ARR projects are the future, but The voluntary carbon markets will still be there. They're turning upwards right now. And I think industries that emit wish to have a market that, in particular, as Trevor mentioned earlier, that are really highly certified. That is very important for buyers. So it's not just a technology companies, it's the airlines, it's the oil and gas companies, it's other concrete companies, other companies that need, need these carbon credits.

And we think that going forward, the market should continue to improve and grow in demand. Also in Europe, and maybe Laura can talk a little a little bit about this, is the EU DR is very important from that perspective. And then other global markets, carbon credits like in Australia and New Zealand and different markets are extremely important. So we, we think the market, while it's a bit weaker right now on the voluntary side, the ARR side is looking very strong. And we do think the voluntary markets will improve.

I hope that helped answer your question.

Laura, anything to add? Well, I must say that I'm not an expert in that sense with the voluntary carbon markets, so I think you answered quite well. Don't really have much to add to that. I know that the EU is building this voluntary carbon market, almost like certificates. But my expertise unfortunately doesn't lie there.

Great questions. I wish we had time for more. Unfortunately, we have reached the end of the breakout session. If I could just get everybody to join me real briefly in giving a hand of thank you and a round of applause to our panelists here. And we hope that you enjoy the rest of the conference.

Thank you.

Thanks for walking on my ground.