Total/tree planting: everything but the carbon sink

The idea of locking up carbon in the world’s forests has mass appeal. “Buy one, get one tree” consumer promotions are proliferating. The World Economic Forum’s “trillion-tree” campaign even won approval from climate change sceptic President Trump. 

The latest tree-hugger is French energy group Total. Last Wednesday, it inked an agreement with the Republic of the Congo to plant a 40,000-hectare forest on sandy plateaux exposed to recurring bushfires. This is part of a $100m a year portfolio of carbon sequestration announced by boss Patrick Pouyanné in 2019. He claimed that reforestation was the most effective way to eliminate excess carbon, at a cost of less than $10 per ton.

Tree planting looks like a get-out-of-jail free card to societies addicted to consumption but terrified of its climatic consequences. New forests would be capacious carbon sinks, proponents claim.

Their optimism is overblown. Forests need lots of land at a time when it is needed to feed an expanding population. 

Consider, for example, the scale of forests theoretically needed to capture all the carbon emitted by EU citizens. Assume each hectare of forest absorbs 6 tons of carbon per year. Europe would need to plant trees over 500m hectares, roughly half its surface area, to soak up its emissions for an extended period.

There are also fears such projects could backfire. Though forests can store carbon for centuries, their longevity is not guaranteed. Political and economic instability adds to the risks.

Total is better equipped to navigate the difficulties than most. It has operated in the Republic of the Congo since 1968, drilling half its exploration wells there. Nor are Congo’s challenges quite as onerous as its conflict-torn neighbour, the DRC. Even so Congo is ranked the 25th most fragile country out of 178 on the fragile states index, and is 15th from the bottom of the corruption perceptions index.

Reforestation schemes, and projects to stop deforestation and the like, could capture as much as 6.7 GtCO2 per year. That is about a fifth of global emissions according to a carbon credits task force co-founded by former Bank of England governor Mark Carney. But the scope is greatest in countries with cheap land, which are typically those where the rule of law is weak. Expect only a fraction of the potential schemes to deliver.

The Lex team is interested in hearing more from readers. Please tell us what you think of tree-planting as a carbon offset in the comments section below.

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