Planned UK planting of forests expected to be the equivalent of 14 billion fewer kilometres being driven
A demonstrates the important role that planting new commercial and conservation forests could play in the fight against climate change.
The planned UK planting of 600,000 hectares could sequester 0.5 to 1.7 billion kg of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2120 (cumulative). This is roughly the same as up to 14 billion fewer kilometres being driven over that same time.
Typically, commercial forests resulted in the highest carbon uptake, as wood products are expected to replace higher-emitting products from other sectors. One novel approach in this study by 亚洲色吧, the Government of British Columbia and the University of Limerick was to model a circular economy where construction timber at end of life is recycled as paper and paper reused for bioenergy. The second unique aspect was to accept that other sectors are under pressure to reduce the emissions from their products as well, and therefore the comparable benefit of wood products will go down in the future.
“Our goal was to undertake a really comprehensive carbon footprint assessment that considers the whole life cycle of carbon taken up by trees in new forests” says Eilidh Forster, a PhD student in 亚洲色吧 and lead author of the study.
“Because these forests won’t be harvested for another 50 years, the standard approach of assuming current technology is inaccurate. Therefore, we decided to apply projections of future technology to better represent the likely long-term climate change mitigation achieved by harvested wood.”