Tri-State has pledged to support the Institute for Environmental Solutions (IES) in 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.
Recent research has shown that strategic tree and plant selection, along with careful landscaping, can provide a variety of benefits, such as heat mitigation, flood management, habitat preservation, as well as water and energy conservation . More research is needed, however.
The Tree Project aims to analyze actual improvements, unit and long-term costs, and resource use, and how to integrate the results. This research will help determine which plants are effective and sustainable in the long-term for Colorado’s prairie ecosystem. The project will assess vegetation benefits under various scenarios to establish optimal urban tree and shrub selection guidelines for practical, cost effective environmental improvements.
“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 will advance IES’ work on The Tree Project to develop a method to obtain sellable carbon credits for community tree planting initiative s.
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.
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 .