Planting trees has plenty of benefits, but this popular carbon-removal method alone can’t possibly counteract the planet-warming emissions caused by the world’s largest fossil-fuel companies. To do that, trees would have to cover the entire land mass of North and Central America, according to a study out Thursday.
Many respected climate scientists and institutions say removing carbon emissions — not just reducing them — is essential to tackling climate change. And trees remove carbon simply by “breathing.”
But crunching the numbers, researchers found that the trees’ collective ability to remove carbon through photosynthesis can’t stand up to the potential emissions from the fossil fuel reserves of the 200 largest oil, gas and coal fuel companies — there’s not enough available land on Earth to feasibly accomplish that.
PV-powered drying and pyrolysis with capture and bottling of the wood gas would maximize the carbon sequestration ability of forest land. The pine species used for lumber and paper production are actually very good at capturing carbon during their growth stage and a lot of that land in the SE US has been sold off as demand for paper dropped off. The biochar produced from that process can also be added to soil, increasing its productivity and carbon sequestration rate.