Tri-State supports The Tree Project

Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association has pledged support to the Institute for Environmental Solutions for its work on The Tree Project, an effort to identify how trees can be used to optimize energy and water conservation while also promoting carbon emissions sequestration and mitigation.

Based in Denver, IES is a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing complex environmental challenges and advancing objective, integrated solutions to the region’s most pressing environmental concerns, such as air and water quality.

Strategically planting trees and other vegetation is often suggested to achieve multiple benefits.  The goal of the Tree Project is to identify how trees can be used to optimize energy and water conservation, carbon sequestration, and air quality.

“We have been tracking this project since early in the year,” said J.M. Shafer, Tri-State’s executive vice president and general manager.  “We feel it has a great deal of potential merit throughout our membership in assessing how landscape practices, through optimal tree selection, management and planting, can achieve significant improvements to the environment.  Through our participation, we hope to eventually provide information – such as tree selection and planting guidelines – to our member co-ops so that their consumers can reduce their energy consumption and save money, while at the same time pursue potential carbon offset opportunities.”

Tri-State’s financial support in the amount of $5,000 will advance IES’ work on The Tree Project to develop a method to obtain sellable carbon credits for community tree planting initiatives.

Based in the Denver suburb of Westminster, Tri-State is the wholesale power supplier to 44 electric cooperatives and public power districts throughout Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska and Wyoming, which in turn serve a consumer base of approximately 1.4 million people.