Comments on: Offset Rule 2: Two RARE Exceptions To Rule 1

By: jba

jba — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 04:08:09 +0000

Good post. Offsets are suspect at best, but trees — much as I love them — are a bad bet. I could live with your exceptions, but even there, I would nort only limit the amount in a portfolio, I’d retire them, and discount them, to boot.

Keep up the great work.

By: Geoff Beacon

Geoff Beacon — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 16:55:28 +0000

The use of trees as carbon offsets may be suspect but can trees be of use combating climate change? Recent research has given tree planting a bad name because trees in snowy areas hide the snow and capture more of the sun’s radiation rather than reflecting it back into space.

But what is the analysis for wood grown as fuel? I live in the north of England where farmers grow willow coppice for heating and for power.

It seems to me that biomass burning with carbon capture would be very effective. Am I wrong?

By: Adrian Whitehead

Adrian Whitehead — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 03:58:44 +0000

Re Geoff’s comment. I think there is biomass options, if biomass energy can be combined with organic agriculture and building soil carbon.

Problems begin in places like Australia where I live. Here native or natural forest are still being destroyed to supply world and local paper needs. In wet forests in Southern Australia you lose 400 t/ha C on the first cut or 1/3 of the carbon stored in the natural forest, this only continues to get worse with additional cycles to you eventually lose 2/3 of the carbon store even taking into account wood stores as furniture / building material etc. The forestry industry here would gladly destroy native forests for power production if they could market it as green or climate positive.

We need to make sure in parts of the world where we still have natural ecosystems in place they are not destroyed to meet a misdirected demand.

The next problem is scale of energy demand and would there be enough land to both produce energy and food.