Forest front a centre in carbon capture and storage.The potential role of forests as a mitigation option for storing carbon; a significant raw material for charcoal/biochar that would allow a constant cycle of sequestration to be established, has emerged as a major alternative option to the highly technical and incredibly expensive carbon capture and storage of greenhouse gases underground. The US Secretary for the interior commenting on a US national assessment recognised the major opportunity of restoring land and ecosystems the US for carbon storage. The US geological survey scientists estimated that the 48 lower states have the potential to store an additional 3-7 billion tons of carbon in new forests. In a separate study by the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR) with WRI and South Dakota State University, indicated that there were over a billion hectares of former and degraded forest land, “a global combined area greater than that of China”.
Most biofuel observers are very familiar with the opportunities around the energy market but the bio-plastics market is generating new market opportunities for companies such as Carbonscape. Currently the main market players are developing bio-plastics from corn, wheat and potatoes, as they wait for the price of oil to creep back above US$70–95 a barrel (depending on who you talk to, it becomes a viable alternative for the huge plastic market. In a recent article ‘Potatoes and algae may replace oil in plastics’ the plastics market was estimated to be worth $2,500 billion. This massive market is also very attractive from a business perspective in saving greenhouse gas emissions. A CNN story‘Are booming bioplastics here to stay?’ quotes French manufacturer Sommer Needlepunch and Natureworks LLC, the provider of Ingeo, that a bio-oil option for bio fibre in their carpet at the UN Copenhagen conference had saved the emissions equivalent of driving an average car 68,869 miles (110,834 kilometers). So as the world economy emerges from its current recession and the barrel of oil starts to climb well above the current US$70 it is hovering about today, the plastics market will start to hunt for an alternative to fossil fuel, and bio-plastics based on alternative bio-feedstocks with their associated CO2 benefits can reap the rewards.
Threatened Forests hold back Climate Change
New research from the University of Leeds in collaboration with the Royal Society and Dr Lee White, the Gabon’s Chief Climate Change Scientist, have assessed the current CO2 absorbing capacity of the remaining tropical forests in Africa, South America and Asia and estimated they are taking up to 4.8 billion tonnes of CO2 per year; 18% of the CO2 added by human activity each year. The 40 year study reported in Nature showed each hectare of intact African forest was trapping an extra 0.6 tonnes of carbon per year. This research once again demonstrates the huge capacity of forests to sequester greenhouse gases to combat climate change. Better still, new forests funded by political initiatives and financial incentives (carbon market for charcoal, renewable energy or biochar), offer Carbonscape’s technology a huge opportunity to make major contribution to combat climate change. A technology and solution that exists now.
Biochar gets recognition at UN Poznan meeting on climate change
At the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Poznan that commenced on the 11th December, its sister UN convention on Desertification lodged a submission in support of Biochar, recognizing the opportunity for soils to act as a major carbon sink. This was rapidly followed by Micronesia endorsing the biochar initiative as an immediate mitigation strategy that should be considered under the current Kyoto protocol rules. These submissions are extraordinary moves by a sister convention and a UNFCCC Country party to kick start negotiations for biochar as an official UN mitigation strategy pre 2012. For Carbonscape, the political endorsement of biochar as a key mitigation strategy for greenhouse gases, provides a framework in which biochar carbon credits, derived from charcoal production, will have a global market both in developed and emerging economies.
Professor James Lovelock argues that charcoal offers the best chance to take the heat out of global warming
In a recent interview in the New Scientist, Professor James Lovelock argues that the ‘massive burial of charcoal’ is humanities one last hope to save itself from global warming and climate change, Professor Lovelock suggests farmers could convert organic waste from the farm to charcoal which can then be ploughed into the soil. Organic waste along with woodchips are the two main sources for charcoal production that Carbonscape have used. Professor Lovelock is the author of the Gaia theory and one of the key scientists whose research lead to greater understanding of how CFC’s damaged the earth ozone protection.
Trees have key role to play in climate change
A Swedish energy firm, Vattenfall, has studied the global opportunities for forests to sequester carbon dioxide through re-afforestation. In a recent report they have identified “1.86 billion hectares of degraded land in the world and that 930 million hectares of this degraded land have a chance of being profitably reclaimed”. They have also calculated that this massive land area of 930 million ha could absorb 21.6 billion tons of CO2 per year out of the atmosphere. Forest carbon is another target market for Carbonscape, to convert the wood to charcoal and to lock up the carbon permanently. This new charcoal market for forest production has the economic potential to encourage land owners to replant the 930 million ha again take up to another 21.6 billion tons of CO2 per year as the stored carbon in the wood is locked up through the charcoal process and is no longer released back to the atmosphere at the time of felling.
US framers recognise climate change offers new economic opportunities by providing a new carbon market for changing land-use
Obama’s new Agriculture Secretary has identified the new opportunities to trade carbon as no different to other produce from the farm, that will create further diversity in revenue and will make farming more sustainable. In support of this the US Department of Agriculture has established the Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets. Carbonscape is also focused on this new opportunity in the agricultural sector called the biochar market—the adding of charcoal to soils offers huge potential especially in the US where intensively farmed soils have been heavily depleted of their natural carbon stocks.
The global carbon market has risen 84% in the last year
A New Carbon Finance report in January identified that the carbon market had grown to US$118 billion, an increase of 84% over the previous year. It also projected that the market remained robust despite the global recession and projected a further rise up to $150 billion in 2009.
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