Ten electric cooperatives that want to build a coal-fired power plant in eastern Georgia have come up with a program to preserve state forests and help consumers offset carbon emissions from their daily activities.

Power4Georgians LLC, which wants to build an 854-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Washington County, is starting "Keeping Forests in Forests" at the end of the summer, spokesman Dean Alford said Tuesday. The 700,000 customers who belong to the Georgia co-ops can participate by paying a fee on their monthly utility bill. The money goes to forest owners across the state as an incentive not to sell their trees.

Forest owners face mounting economic pressures from high property taxes, urban sprawl and a declining international market for trees, officials said.

Many of the program's details, such as how much participating customers would pay, have yet to be finalized. In short, customers would go online, probably to their electric co-op's Web site, to determine their carbon footprint — the amount of pollution their cars, household electricity use and other actions contribute to greenhouse gases.

The Web site would use that figure to calculate how much participants would pay each month, Alford said.

The fee will be donated to Carbon TreeBank LLC, a partnership that acts as a go-between with the electric co-operatives and the landowners. Carbon TreeBank will distribute the money to the forest owners.

"We hope this is one step in recognizing the good work the timberland owners are doing," said Earl Barrs , a partner in Carbon TreeBank and owner of Due South Investments LLC, a Macon-based real estate, forestry and business investment firm.

Utilities and electric cooperatives nationwide offer energy-conservation and "green-power" programs to their customers. The programs are typically voluntary and fee-based. With a basic "green-power" program, utilities use the fee to buy renewable power from other parts of the state or region.

For example, Georgia Power started offering a green-power program in the fall of 2006. Customers can buy renewable energy in 100-kilowatt-hour blocks, which will cost an additional $4.50 a month.

Alford —who also owns Allied Energy Services LLC, a Conyers-based developer of traditional and renewable-energy projects in Georgia and elsewhere — said that "Keeping Forests in Forests" is different than those other programs. By helping protect forests, he said, it's a clearer carbon offset effort.

As a part of the program, Wells Timberland REIT, a Norcross-based real estate and timberland investment company, will donate 50,000 acres of trees for the first three years of the program to help do this.

He also said despite Power4Georgians' efforts to conserve and use renewable forms electricity, it is necessary to build a coal-fired power plant to support future energy demand.

"You've got to do everything," he said.