Planting forests covering 1.2 million hectares 鈥� equivalent to the more than seven times the area of Greater London 鈥� should be an immediate priority if the UK is to achieve zero net emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050. That鈥檚 the key recommendation of a by the UK Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering.
The report is the first assessment of practical steps to help the UK reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide and meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement to stabilise global warming. 鈥淵ou could say it鈥檚 a call to action,鈥� says Nilay Shah of Imperial College London, and a member of the working group that produced the report.
The priority should continue to be on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. This can be done by switching to renewable forms of power such as solar and wind energy, says the report. Progress to-date in this renewables shift has already helped the UK to cut its annual emissions from .
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But by themselves, emission reductions would still leave the UK producing 130 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, the report warns, well short of the 2050 zero-carbon target.
Planting forests 鈥� which trap airborne carbon dioxide as wood 鈥� is one of the first practical measures that could help the UK cut the predicted surplus. The report estimates that new forests covering 1.2 million hectares could extract 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. 鈥淲ithin a couple of decades, you鈥檇 be drawing down significant amounts of carbon,鈥� says Shah.
A further 5 million tonnes per year could be trapped by restoring depleted wetlands and peatlands, with another 10 million tonnes a year saved by enriching soils with biochar, a very stable form of carbon made by burning wood in the absence of oxygen.
Within two or three decades, the report predicts that other, larger-scale processes to trap carbon will be fully-tested and in widespread use, and have potential to dump vast amounts of carbon dioxide from power plants into deep, natural reservoirs under the sea.
