Storing CO₂ with Underground Forest
Trees are very good at storing Co2 but once a forest is fully grown, the storage capacity reaches its maximum below 500 tons of Co2 per hectare. The trees keep growing as long as they live, but other trees die because they end up in the shade of the big ones, because they get blown over in a storm or through wildfires and pests. If we want a forest to grow the storage capacity beyond the 500 tons mark, we must remove the fully grown ones to make space for new seedlings that we plant. The harvested trees are preserved for ever by driving them in deep layers of peat and clay. This way, if we preserve 2% of the forest every year, we will have 500 tons preserved plus the 500 tons in the forest after 50 years. The forest has doubled its capacity to remove Co2 from the atmosphere and the good thing is, the preserved wood is forever out of reach for disasters. There are 25 million wooden piles already in the saturated soils of Holland so there’s ample scientific proof that this method of removing Co2 has zero emissions in millennia for spruce.
With the approach of Underground Forest the wood that is preserved doesn’t only store Co2, but it is put to a second use as foundations for building projects, thus making it possible to build homes that remove more Co2 from the atmosphere that the building materials on top and the building process itself has emitted.
About the Project
These credits are form a project in Berkenwoude in the province of Zuid-Holland in the Netherlands where a dairy farmer decided to build a new trench silo on a wooden foundation.
The owner of the land that holds the piles is, of course, the first owner of the removals. He has chosen to use wooden piles as a foundation instead of concrete, thus storing the carbon in the wood and avoiding the emissions from producing concrete. We consider Underground Forest to be the remover as they have, in cooperation with the owner, the forester, the contractor and the pile driver, made sure that this carbon dioxide removal is taking place. The legal owner of the stored Co2 has transferred the rights to certify the removal and create carbon credits to Underground Forest and they share the income after they are sold. This way the buyer of the credits makes it possible for the owner to bridge the gap between the usual concrete piles to the sustainable wooden solution..
Website: https://undergroundforest.nl/