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Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

bloomberg.com

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Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#71

Post by fareesh »

ricefield wrote: post #35

Not an expert in this... at 103 metric tons of CO2 per acre per year, how many acres of this do we need to plan to make an impact? Look like according to this random Medium blog, we should aim to remove 10B metrics tons every year? So that's 970MM acres? https://medium.com/@friedmann2/going-negative-time-to-suck-i...

Carbon and CO2 "emissions" numbers are different

"Carbon" is 10B "CO2" is 40B

This article says Carbon in the headline but CO2 in the body

From the body of the article:

> While each acre of most tree species can capture and store 1.1 to 9.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, an acre of empress trees can absorb 103.

40 billion / 103 = 388 Million acres of Empress Trees

China is around 2 billion acres in size 22% of China is covered by forests

22% of 2 billion is 440M

In theory China alone can solve this problem by replacing the indigenous trees with these trees. Bad idea though for obvious reasons.

In practice if every compatible country just got rid of some sub-optimal tree and replaced it with this tree, it could probably work.

If we gathered up the annual amount of money spent on "solving" Climate Change - one example that comes to mind is the recent Google summit where all the B-tier Celebrities went to in Yachts and Private Jets. What if we took all the money that these kinds of events cost and devote it to this single exercise. I'm pretty sure it could be done. All it would take is some governments to say OK. They can get paid for it by the other countries too as a one-off payment.

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#72

Post by egdod »

__sy__ wrote: post #54
tcgv wrote: post #50

> Empress trees (...) absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre. In 2016, U.S. GHG emissions were 20.15 metric tons CO2-equivalent per person[1]. So basically each american would have to cultivate about 0.196 acre of empress trees (792 sq meters, or 8522 sq foot) to become carbon neutral. [1] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-environmental-footprint-f...

I also did a similar back-of-the-envelop calculation the moment I saw this 103 tons per acre figures. Global CO2 emissions: ~40GT/year Area required: ~600K square miles This is approximately the size of the entire state of Alaska. Every year.

Presumably you don’t have to harvest and replant them every year though. I’m guessing it takes them several years to get to the point that they’re full grown.

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#73

Post by EGreg »

brians wrote: post #20
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about carbon per tree. It's about carbon per acre*year. Dense woods grow slowly so they take in very little carbon per year even though they grow very large. Fast growing trees are much better at quickly taking CO2 of the atmosphere.

Fast growing matters. The ability to harvest them and have them regrow matters a lot too. That’s what makes bamboo so effective at carbon capture.

Only if you harvest them without releasing CO2 - no firewood for instance

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#74

Post by __sy__ »

egdod wrote: post #72
__sy__ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also did a similar back-of-the-envelop calculation the moment I saw this 103 tons per acre figures. Global CO2 emissions: ~40GT/year Area required: ~600K square miles This is approximately the size of the entire state of Alaska. Every year.

Presumably you don’t have to harvest and replant them every year though. I’m guessing it takes them several years to get to the point that they’re full grown.

Sure, but there's also got to be some sort of diminishing return.

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#75

Post by _rpd »

bwanab wrote: post #70
__sy__ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also did a similar back-of-the-envelop calculation the moment I saw this 103 tons per acre figures. Global CO2 emissions: ~40GT/year Area required: ~600K square miles This is approximately the size of the entire state of Alaska. Every year.

Not every year. Given the article's assertion of the 103 tons per acre per year, your Alaska of Empress trees would do it until they all die and presumably those forests will be maintained into perpetuity.

When the tree dies, it will release 99% of the stored carbon back to the atmosphere. Unless you bury the tree in an anaerobic environment or treat it in some other way, the tree is just a time-delayed release mechanism.

New forest can store a buffer in perpetuity, e.g., a new trillion trees can store 133 Gt. But current emissions are > 40 Gt/year, so this is < 4 years worth of emissions.

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#76

Post by CyanBird »

jfengel wrote: post #61
jaclaz wrote: post #39

One of the firms referenced in the Bloomberg article actually offers the plants (and opportunities of investment in them) and has a number of answers to the questions asked in the thread: https://worldtree.info/empress-tree/ Though I have personally never heard about anything actually manufactured with the actual "empress" or "princess" timber. It seems like in Japan it has a number of tradititonal uses, the family i…

And they're going to have to think of something to do with that wood, if it's going to be part of a carbon reduction methodology. The trees don't live forever, and if they are left to rot or burn, they release all that CO2 back into the environment. Lumber would be one use. So would charcoal, or paper. Or possibly even burying them. But either way, growing them is only half the battle.

In Chile big forestry companies (?) which dedicate themselves to grow and then sell timber are growing eucalyptus trees for their business, but said eucalyptus trees have great externalities, in that they use colossal amounts of water , given that said trees come from a dry climate, they simply evolved to capture as much water as possible.

I wonder if there's a business here, replacing eucalyptus trees for empress, which might very well grow faster and without as many externalities, such as the water cost, or the bark eucalyptus trees shed which is a fire hazard

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#77

Post by RaptorJ »

__sy__ wrote: post #54
tcgv wrote: post #50

> Empress trees (...) absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre. In 2016, U.S. GHG emissions were 20.15 metric tons CO2-equivalent per person[1]. So basically each american would have to cultivate about 0.196 acre of empress trees (792 sq meters, or 8522 sq foot) to become carbon neutral. [1] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-environmental-footprint-f...

I also did a similar back-of-the-envelop calculation the moment I saw this 103 tons per acre figures. Global CO2 emissions: ~40GT/year Area required: ~600K square miles This is approximately the size of the entire state of Alaska. Every year.

well, if you convert it all to biochar (say with a 50% volume fudge factor to account for non-carbon components and packing density), you just have to stack an area the size of pennsylvania with 1 meter of biochar each year to zero emissions.

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#78

Post by bwb »

crispyambulance wrote: post #64
tcgv wrote: post #50

> Empress trees (...) absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre. In 2016, U.S. GHG emissions were 20.15 metric tons CO2-equivalent per person[1]. So basically each american would have to cultivate about 0.196 acre of empress trees (792 sq meters, or 8522 sq foot) to become carbon neutral. [1] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-environmental-footprint-f...

Empress trees certainly have some impressive specs, but no one plant is going to be the silver bullet. Can we eventually take per capita carbon footprint down to a fraction of what it was in 2016? I think so, if the people can be convinced to elect sane leaders in the US and elsewhere. Can vast regions in the USA and other countries be re-forested? Yes, if the willpower is there. Is it worthwhile to develop artificia…

well said :), i vote for you!

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#79

Post by xfactor973 »

i can't figure this out: https://worldtree.info/investment/ this seems far too good to be true. Back of the napkin calculations show they're saying the returns could be 28% a year compounded. That's better than buffet level returns. Surely this is a scam right?

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#80

Post by duckymcduckface »

_rpd wrote: post #75
bwanab wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every year. Given the article's assertion of the 103 tons per acre per year, your Alaska of Empress trees would do it until they all die and presumably those forests will be maintained into perpetuity.

When the tree dies, it will release 99% of the stored carbon back to the atmosphere. Unless you bury the tree in an anaerobic environment or treat it in some other way, the tree is just a time-delayed release mechanism. New forest can store a buffer in perpetuity, e.g., a new trillion trees can store 133 Gt. But current emissions are > 40 Gt/year, so this is < 4 years worth of emissions.

Makes me wonder if in the future the solution will be to create synthetic crude and pump it back into the ground.
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