PARIS, Aug 30 - French oil major TotalEnergies

has signed a $100 million deal to help preserve U.S. forests

under a scheme that will allow the company to discount the

amount of planet-warming gasses it emits in official

environmental reporting.

The agreement with partners Anew Climate and Aurora

Sustainable Lands calls for the reduction of timber harvesting

across 300,000 hectares in 10 states - the idea being that the

preserved trees will sequester CO2 and prevent it from entering

the atmosphere and increasing global temperature levels.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has

encouraged the voluntary use of such programs, which produce

carbon credits that companies use to offset the CO2 released by

their own business.

However, recent studies found that several large forest

protection projects failed to deliver their promised emissions

reductions, shaking confidence in the offset market, which

shrank for the first time in at least seven years in 2023.

"TotalEnergies has very positively received the U.S.

government's recently published guiding principles on Voluntary

Carbon Markets and is committed to follow them to contribute to

strengthening integrity and transparency in these markets,"

Adrien Henry, TotalEnergies' vice president of nature-based

solutions, said in a statement on Friday.

The companies did not say how many offsets would be

generated by the investment. TotalEnergies has a goal of

spending $100 million per year on projects offsetting at least 5

million metric tons of CO2 annually by 2030.

The credits will offset part of the CO2 directly emitted by

Total's sites - less than 10% of its overall emissions - beyond

2030.

Last year TotalEnergies emitted 390 million tons of

CO2-equivalent, the vast majority of which was released when its

customers burnt its fuels for heat and energy.

While the oil major is working to reduce greenhouse gases

from its own operations, it has not planned for a large

reduction in emissions from its products by 2030, as the company

expands its oil and gas exploration and production alongside the

building of renewable energy capacity.