The CO2 Mitigation Benefits Of Forests (from The Herald )

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The CO2 mitigation benefits of forests

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G I Crawford's criticism of wood for fuel (Letters, March 25) is misplaced. Given the foresight of previous generations in planting, we have a readily available stock of wood now. In a natural cycle trees will keep growing till they are too tall and then fall over, decay and release their CO2. Thus a forester can intervene and use this material profitably. When we harvest a tree in the UK the Forestry Commission ensures there is sufficient replanting to replace that tree, if not two or more. A tree can be thought of as providing several useful products. The best parts of that tree can be used for construction timber and then the remainder can be used for fuel wood or to make chipboard or paper. It is the essence of local sustainability and has been properly managed by good foresters in this way for centuries.

The CO2 mitigation benefits of forests are threefold. First, substituting energy-intensive products (eg, concrete, steel) leads to indirect replacement of fossil fuels. Secondly, the use of wood fuel can substitute fossil-fuel CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. In any life-cycle analysis this is by far the major benefit. Thirdly, wood products can be reused or used as bioenergy at the end of their life cycle, additionally displacing the use of fossil fuel, and additionally preventing landfill. Scotland has a highly successful and skilled forest industry, but we must strive to educate communities to use their own resources properly and to increase forest cover to meet the increasing demand for sustainable local products and energy.

Dan Gates, Director, Reforesting Scotland, 58 Shandwick Place, Edinburgh.

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Posted by: Jimmy fae the West, Embra on 2:52am Wed 26 Mar 08

Is it not also correct that Coppiced stumps have an indefinite lifespan? Although for the sake of agricultural purposes the stumps will be vegetatively cloned for replanting every few years, the trials with Willow have been very encouraging and heavy cropping. Burning fossil fuel, coal and oil is bad but mining, reprocessing and storing Plutonium is far worse.

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Posted by: Boabby, Vancouver Island on 6:15am Wed 26 Mar 08

Mr Gates is a director of a seriously misnamed organisation. "Reforesting Scotland"
' should be more correctly written "Afforesting Scotland". Over the past half century much of the centuries-establishe
d environment in Scotland has been usurped or destroyed by the planting of exotic conifer species , thereby destroying habitats which for centuries has supported a multitude of species. Many of those same species had been more recently driven to rely on the now-destroyed habitat thro' the destruction of their preferred pastoral environment by the use of nitrous fertilisation in agriculture.. Mr Gates ' contention that a tree can be burned without adding to carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere just cannot make sense. It takes a tree at least fifty to sixty years to reach a maturity which mkes it profitable to "harvest " it, and over that sixty years it is absorbing and trapping carbon dioxide, and producing oxygen. A tree --of any age-- which is burned for fuel can be burned IN A MATTER OF MINUTES, releasing all of the stored co2 in that short space of time, and most certainly NOT producing any oxygen! It has been calculated ---by people at least as qualified to comment as Mr Gates---that over the period of 24 hours the burning of forest land in Brazil produces more carbon dioxide than is produced by flying 8 MILLION people over the Atlantic! Mr Gates, I don't know whom you speak for; certainly not for me, anyway. It's time honesty came into the discussion----NOTHIN
G burns "clean"--and that certainly includes all carbonaceous "fuels" such as trees and wood waste. Even hydrogen produces copious amounts of water in combustion, and I think this is probably the "cleanest" of all fuels.

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Posted by: Donald Anderson, glasgow on 8:19am Wed 26 Mar 08

I blame flatulent coos myself.

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