4 ms·

Wouldn't a better solution be to encourage more things built of wood? Cut the trees down and use them, while replacing with more. E.g. Encourage more wooden ho

Wouldn't a better solution be to encourage more things built of wood? Cut the trees down and use them, while replacing with more. E.g. Encourage more wooden houses and your not only capturing carbon but storing it separately so more can be captured in that same place. While there are probably many better solutions, you would think whatever they are we need something that can continue to capture carbon ongoing. A forest, as great as they are for a plethora of reasons, is fairly finite in terms of carbon capture.

wodow 5y ago
One group working on this is the Natural Material Innovation group at Cambridge: https://www.natmat.group.cam.ac.uk/research/natmat https://www.natmat.group.cam.ac.uk/research/natmat "Timber Towers" London proposal: https://www.natmat.group.cam.ac.uk/news/timber-towers-could-transform-london2019s-skyline https://www.natmat.group.cam.ac.uk/news/timber-towers-could-... (2019) (encountered via the easy-listening of BBC Radio 4's 39 Ways to Save the Planet: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qy43 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qy43 )
- cf100clunk 5y ago
  Similarly, see the University of British Columbia's Wood Building Design & Construction Centre: https://wbdc.ubc.ca/ https://wbdc.ubc.ca/ and the Province Of British Columbia's Wood First Initiative: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/supporting-innovation/wood-first-initiative https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/support...
  - entangledqubit 5y ago
    For those familiar with American building practices, it's interesting to see some stark contrasts. This video discusses solid timber walls (among other interesting features) in a Swiss building project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlplalGNfFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlplalGNfFM
Cycl0ps 5y ago
I've had this on my mind for a bit, but carbon capture seems to be oversold from my understanding. The way I see it, additional trees would reduce atmospheric carbon at that moment in time, but as they burn or decay it releases CO2 back to the atmosphere and the problem continues. If the issue is that we've pumped so many tons of carbon out of the Earth, the solution is to pump so many tons of carbon back in. Remove it from the cycle so that the net amount of surface carbon is reduced. Personally, my solution is to start chucking trees down a mineshaft and backfill the shaft when it's full. It's crude but it gets the idea across. Edit: happened to be listening to a podcast writing this and right as I finish they start talking about olivine, which is a mineral that can absorb it's weight in CO2 and prices around $7 USD/ton. Maybe a better option for carbon removal
- coagmano 5y ago
  This is the most prominent olivine sequestration project I've found: https://projectvesta.org https://projectvesta.org Stripe (and others) are currently purchasing negative emissions from a bunch of projects like this to help move them down the cost curve: https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases There's lots of cool work in this space at the moment, which is much more measureable than "trees not cut down"
- rory 5y ago
  The mineshaft-chucking idea could actually work decently. You'd probably want to turn it into charcoal first though.
  - notatoad 5y ago
    wouldn't turning it into charcoal release a lot of the carbon?
    - toast0 5y ago
      It releases some of the carbon, but the resulting mass is nearly all carbon, rather than the big mix of composition that trees are. It makes sense to try to sequester just the carbon and not the rest. If you have a reasonable forestry plan to supply the source wood, do reasonable emissions control and harvest the energy released while producing the charcoal, and have a good place nearby to sequester the carbon, it might be a pretty decent way to get to carbon sequestration. This is, of course, a hand wavey argument. I'm not qualified to put together real numbers for how effective this could be and what the relative emissions and energy output would be.
javman 5y ago
Logging and converting the trees into lumber for building isn't free from a carbon perspective. A modern logging operation typically has several large diesel-powered heavy machines to cut down and move the trees. Then the logs are transported by diesel-powered semi trucks to a mill. The mill has many machines to move logs, cut them, and remove some moisture (kilns). Once they are cut, they are loaded onto more diesel powered trucks and delivered somewhere to sell. Back at the site of the cut, piles of slash (all of the branches) are left on the ground to rot, or sometimes piled up and burned. How long will the buildings made of wood last? Eventually they are bulldozed and hauled away to a landfill.
- coagmano 5y ago
  Yeah this makes it not viable from a pure sequestration point of view, but building your house from timber is still better on emissions than concrete etc
- Gustomaximus 5y ago
  I considers the logging/lumber issue as initially I thought much better to mulch the trees to increase soil levels and replant but not sure how that would net out carbon wise. But in the case of houses, you have these costs, but you also offsetting bricks and concrete etc. This also has a huge carbon production but without the offset. Also increasingly the logging and transport will be cleaner as EVs advance. And yes buildings will be hauled to landfill, but that's timber in landfill and burying carbon for some time too. Would be interesting for someone to run the numbers on actual impact.
cf100clunk 5y ago
Reforestation is an extremely time-consuming affair with many, many possible ecological and economic downfalls and/or environmental harms. As a sidebar to your suggestion of using more wood, perhaps a partial step in that direction is greater recycling of unfinished wood products into chips and dust for use in engineered wood outputs. Similarly, a change in the chemistry of wood finishing products (stains, coatings, paints, adhesives) to 100% removable or neutralized state would permit discarded finished wood products to be recycled rather than dumped. So, to directly reply to your question, cutting down trees and replacing them with more is not a quick or necessarily successful strategy.
BurningFrog 5y ago
I don't think we need that much construction built, for one thing. I have an even simpler idea: Cut the trees down and store the wood permanently. Left in the wild, the wood will eventually break down, and the carbon return to the atmosphere. But there must be some low tech way to preserve the wood for a century at least. That's easily long enough!

wodow 5y ago

One group working on this is the Natural Material Innovation group at Cambridge: https://www.natmat.group.cam.ac.uk/research/natmat https://www.natmat.group.cam.ac.uk/research/natmat "Timber Towers" London proposal: https://www.natmat.group.cam.ac.uk/news/timber-towers-could-transform-london2019s-skyline https://www.natmat.group.cam.ac.uk/news/timber-towers-could-... (2019) (encountered via the easy-listening of BBC Radio 4's 39 Ways to Save the Planet: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qy43 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qy43 )

cf100clunk 5y ago
Similarly, see the University of British Columbia's Wood Building Design & Construction Centre: https://wbdc.ubc.ca/ https://wbdc.ubc.ca/ and the Province Of British Columbia's Wood First Initiative: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/supporting-innovation/wood-first-initiative https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/support...
- entangledqubit 5y ago
  For those familiar with American building practices, it's interesting to see some stark contrasts. This video discusses solid timber walls (among other interesting features) in a Swiss building project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlplalGNfFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlplalGNfFM

Cycl0ps 5y ago

I've had this on my mind for a bit, but carbon capture seems to be oversold from my understanding. The way I see it, additional trees would reduce atmospheric carbon at that moment in time, but as they burn or decay it releases CO2 back to the atmosphere and the problem continues. If the issue is that we've pumped so many tons of carbon out of the Earth, the solution is to pump so many tons of carbon back in. Remove it from the cycle so that the net amount of surface carbon is reduced. Personally, my solution is to start chucking trees down a mineshaft and backfill the shaft when it's full. It's crude but it gets the idea across. Edit: happened to be listening to a podcast writing this and right as I finish they start talking about olivine, which is a mineral that can absorb it's weight in CO2 and prices around $7 USD/ton. Maybe a better option for carbon removal

coagmano 5y ago
This is the most prominent olivine sequestration project I've found: https://projectvesta.org https://projectvesta.org Stripe (and others) are currently purchasing negative emissions from a bunch of projects like this to help move them down the cost curve: https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases There's lots of cool work in this space at the moment, which is much more measureable than "trees not cut down"
rory 5y ago
The mineshaft-chucking idea could actually work decently. You'd probably want to turn it into charcoal first though.
- notatoad 5y ago
  wouldn't turning it into charcoal release a lot of the carbon?
  - toast0 5y ago
    It releases some of the carbon, but the resulting mass is nearly all carbon, rather than the big mix of composition that trees are. It makes sense to try to sequester just the carbon and not the rest. If you have a reasonable forestry plan to supply the source wood, do reasonable emissions control and harvest the energy released while producing the charcoal, and have a good place nearby to sequester the carbon, it might be a pretty decent way to get to carbon sequestration. This is, of course, a hand wavey argument. I'm not qualified to put together real numbers for how effective this could be and what the relative emissions and energy output would be.

javman 5y ago

Logging and converting the trees into lumber for building isn't free from a carbon perspective. A modern logging operation typically has several large diesel-powered heavy machines to cut down and move the trees. Then the logs are transported by diesel-powered semi trucks to a mill. The mill has many machines to move logs, cut them, and remove some moisture (kilns). Once they are cut, they are loaded onto more diesel powered trucks and delivered somewhere to sell. Back at the site of the cut, piles of slash (all of the branches) are left on the ground to rot, or sometimes piled up and burned. How long will the buildings made of wood last? Eventually they are bulldozed and hauled away to a landfill.

coagmano 5y ago
Yeah this makes it not viable from a pure sequestration point of view, but building your house from timber is still better on emissions than concrete etc
Gustomaximus 5y ago
I considers the logging/lumber issue as initially I thought much better to mulch the trees to increase soil levels and replant but not sure how that would net out carbon wise. But in the case of houses, you have these costs, but you also offsetting bricks and concrete etc. This also has a huge carbon production but without the offset. Also increasingly the logging and transport will be cleaner as EVs advance. And yes buildings will be hauled to landfill, but that's timber in landfill and burying carbon for some time too. Would be interesting for someone to run the numbers on actual impact.

cf100clunk 5y ago

Reforestation is an extremely time-consuming affair with many, many possible ecological and economic downfalls and/or environmental harms. As a sidebar to your suggestion of using more wood, perhaps a partial step in that direction is greater recycling of unfinished wood products into chips and dust for use in engineered wood outputs. Similarly, a change in the chemistry of wood finishing products (stains, coatings, paints, adhesives) to 100% removable or neutralized state would permit discarded finished wood products to be recycled rather than dumped. So, to directly reply to your question, cutting down trees and replacing them with more is not a quick or necessarily successful strategy.

BurningFrog 5y ago

I don't think we need that much construction built, for one thing. I have an even simpler idea: Cut the trees down and store the wood permanently. Left in the wild, the wood will eventually break down, and the carbon return to the atmosphere. But there must be some low tech way to preserve the wood for a century at least. That's easily long enough!