9 Apr (CLIM) Zeng, Burying Woody Biomass

Ning Zeng, U Maryland 

Wood Vault: Burying woody biomass for carbon sequestration -- a simple idea that actually works

Wed, 9 Apr, 1:30pm 

Innovation 134 and via Zoom (for link, email bklinger@gmu.edu) 

Host: Jagadish Shukla 

To permanently sequester a large amount of CO2, planting trees is not enough. In an established forest, some trees absorb CO2, but other trees die, decay and release carbon back into the atmosphere. Wood Harvesting and Storage (WHS) proposes tree harvesting or waste wood collection, followed by secure storage in engineered structures called Wood Vault to prevent decomposition. The net effect is to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at up to 1/4 of our current emission rate. Demo projects show a durability of centuries, and a cost of $10-50 per ton of CO2. The technique is low cost, distributed, easy to monitor, safe, and creates green jobs, thus adding to the 'toolbox' of climate change mitigation. The burgeoning industry of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is implementing WHS commercially, opening a new research subject.