Trees worth planting

Analysts rate US forestry as viable option for carbon sequestration

Americans may get a decent bang for their buck by planting forests to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. It comes out pretty much on a par with the price of achieving the equivalent carbon cuts through energy efficiency. That’s the headline on a report by two top economists - but the sting in the tail is the massive size of the plantations that would be needed to make a real dent in the country’s emissions.

Robert Stavins and Kenneth Richards, from Harvard and Indiana universities respectively, reckon it’s smart for the government to make planting attractive to private landowners, whether through special payments or tax breaks. “When and if a mandatory domestic greenhouse gas reduction program is established in the US,” says Stavins, “a carefully designed carbon sequestration program really ought to be included in a cost-effective portfolio of compliant strategies for the country.” The report, published by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, estimates that it would cost between $25 and $75 per ton to remove 300 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year in this way. That would take out just over 5% of the current annual US carbon emissions total of some 5.8 billion tons. Raising that proportion to 20%, however, might be unrealistic, requiring the planting of trees over an area the size of Texas, at an estimated annual cost of $7 billion. So far the Bush administration has only promised to spend up to $90 million on programs to combat climate change.

15 March 2005