Forestry & Climate Change
The evidence is clear; planting more trees and using more wood will make a big difference in terms of tackling climate change. We all know trees are good for the planet – but the potential benefits last far beyond putting seeds in the ground.
Trees sequester (soak up) carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow - and then when the wood is harvested and made into wood products, the CO2 is stored in those products.
This is one reason why England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all want to increase the rate of tree planting significantly. The UK-wide target - agreed with The Climate Change Committee, an independent expert adviser to the UK and devolved governments - is 30,000 hectares (about 75,000 acres) of new woodland every year.
The latest statistics for 2023/24 show the UK is planting just over 20,000 hectares of new woodland every year. This is a big improvement on recent years but still well short of the 30,000-hectare target.
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The Climate Change Committee progress report in June 2023 called for urgent action to tackle continued policy failure on tree planting. It noted a “large disparity” between Government ambition and actual progress. The Committee also said if planting targets were met, up to 39,000 more jobs could be created in the UK. Read the Net Zero Workforce report (Pages 40-41).
Increasing tree planting is vital if the UK is to meet its target for net zero (balancing out the amount of greenhouse gases produced with the amount removed from the atmosphere). The UK net zero target is 2050 - and 2045 in Scotland.
Faster-growing conifers - like Sitka spruce, the species most needed to create the wood products we need - soak up carbon dioxide much more quickly and effectively. That's a strong reason for a significant proportion of new planting schemes to be wood-producing conifer species. This paper by Dr Andrew Cameron, a senior lecturer in Biological Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, explains why.
Are landowners buying land to ‘greenwash’ their environmental credentials through carbon offsetting?
Very few companies buy land for the purpose of offsetting their own emissions; and those that we are aware of are planting broadleaved trees, not wood-producing forests, following a change to the rules for carbon credits in 2022.
Almost all tree planting is carried out by landowners, farmers, charities, or people who want to invest for environmental and financial reasons.
All planting projects have to go through a series of checks and must meet the UK Forestry Standard. Securing carbon credits is a separate exercise; the owner of the land must meet the rules of the Woodland Carbon Code - managed by the government and focused on ensuring planting projects designed to sequester (soak up) carbon dioxide are not ‘greenwashing’.
It is important that businesses who buy carbon credits are focusing on ‘offsetting’ emissions that they currently cannot avoid.