Full Citation
Title: How much new forest land would it take to offset a coal plant's greenhouse gas emissions? An engineering case study of Georgia's plant scherer
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2022
ISBN:
ISSN: 2473-9510
DOI: 10.1525/CSE.2022.1552208/119768
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Abstract: Climate change is largely caused by continued use of fossil fuels to provide energy services. Increasingly, given the goal of mitigating climate change, organizations like power utilities are announcing “net-zero” greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions goals that do not necessarily require fossil fuel-fired facilities to mitigate their emissions or close. If paired with carbon dioxide removal (CDR), ongoing emissions could theoretically coexist with net-zero goals. CDR, however, is resource intensive, regardless of removal pathway. One common question is whether tree planting could be a low-impact pathway to compensate for ongoing or legacy GHG emissions, since trees take up atmospheric CO2 and store the carbon as wood. Although planting trees might sound like a benign climate strategy, the need for additionality and permanence means that forestry-based CDR has immense land requirements at climate-relevant scales. To contextualize this land intensity, this case study evaluates how much land would be required to counterbalance a utility's emissions from a large coal-fired power plant in Georgia with forest-based CDR. Compensating for 1 year of plant emissions would require permanent industrial forestation of all land in the plant's host county that is not already forested or developed (with buildings, roads, etc.), with a 30-year lead time-highlighting a key challenge of relying on tree planting to meet climate goals. Readers engaging this case will be able to discuss land use requirements of relying on compensatory forestry-based CDR for net-zero emissions goals, in addition to being prepared to replicate this analysis for other power plants or emitters.
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Authors: Reinhart, Katrina; Grubert, Emily
Periodical (Full): Case Studies in the Environment
Issue: 1
Volume: 6
Pages: 1-12
Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Land Use/Urban Organization
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