Aurora Forealis

Aurora Forealis – Light of the Northern Forest – is a medium sized foundation focusing on economic, large-scale carbon capture. ¹

We actually did not start from the premise of boral forests or even forests at all. Coming from scientific and business backgrounds, we tried to understand atmospheric carbon from first principles.

We started from the emissions side – and quickly realized that emissions are not coming down fast enough. Therefore, large-scale, economic carbon removal would be essential , and turned to the question: What are the best, viable carbon capture technologies?

It was from this comprehensive carbon capture study that we ended up with boreal forests. In summary, they create a truly large-scale opportunity, with clear additionality and high cost efficiency – often below USD 10 per ton. Furthermore, in those numerous cases where the resulting cellulose, hemi-cellulose or timber fibers can be productively utilized, the cost of captured carbon is often even negative. In this biome wide framework of improved boreal silviculture, the largest opportunities are in Russia, followed by Canada and United States.

For our path and discoveries kindly see the brief summary below: ²

1. All our work is public benefit and non-profit, but we are privately funded and do not seek any external funding.
   ↩︎
2. For detailed reviews:
   Deep Carbon, Surface Carbon – Earth’s carbon stores and it’s two carbon cycles
   Carbon Emissions – Timelapse maps of worldwide CO₂ emissions 1959-present
   Atmospheric Carbon – Carbon Capture from first principles
   Biome Carbon – Carbon in biomes and Why forests are the key
   Forests’ Carbon – Comparing Tropical / Temperate / Boreal forests
   Boreal Carbon – Opportunities in boreal, biome wide silviculture
   Seven S’s – Foundation’s methodology for analysing programs
   ↩︎

Our path on atmospheric carbon started from the emissions side – but we quickly realized that emissions are not coming down fast enough. For example, the max +1.5 degree target is likely to be crossed already in 2024.

Illustrative is the timelapse map of world’s coal use 1959-2023. It visualizes how emissions are not abating but actually increasing.¹ Whilst CO₂ totals from developed nations are flat or declining, they are rapidly increasing in the newly industrializing nations such as China, India, Türkiye, Indonesia etc. The reason is simple, the economics of fossil fuel based growth are attractive.

Therefore, large-scale, economic carbon removal will be absolutely essential. There key questions are: How to do this in large scale and economically? What are the best, viable carbon capture technologies?

1. The map illustrates coal based carbon dioxide emissions per every 0.1 degree grid on earth for years 1959-2023. ↩︎

As with any difficult problem, one should start from first principles. In the case of atmospheric carbon these turn out to be its three main physical characteristics:

1. Volume
2. Sparseness
3. Mass

Volume. Earth’s atmosphere stretches from planet’s surface up to as far as 10,000 kilometres, with total volume of some 5.2*10¹⁹ m³. This is over four times the volume of world’s oceans. Whilst carbon dioxide is a relatively heavy molecule and thus denser in lower altitudes, the necessity to shift through massive air volumes requires exposing very large surface areas. Volume wise you are boiling the ocean – many times over.

Sparseness. Contra to the large total volume, the number of carbon molecules per unit of air is actually small. Whilst double from the start of the industrial revolution, the current concentration is still only 421 particles per million, i.e. very sparse. Capturing CO₂ molecules from air is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Therefore filtering through the particles must be very energy efficient – you capture only four needles per every ten thousand examined.

Mass. Final key characteristic is heavy mass. One ton is already a lot – gigaton 10⁹ truly so. We emit annually about 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide. Therefore, upon finding and capturing the atmospheric carbon, the process must provide a very large mass for absorption and storage.

These three requirements – large surfaces, energy efficiency, and significant mass – are the main constraints for any carbon capture mechanism. These are also the reasons why it appears unlikely that any of the currently developed capture technologies will make the necessary cost-effective, large-scale impact. At least that was our assessment from studying them quite extensively.

Indeed, there turns out to be only three possible technologies with the required surfaces, efficiency, and mass:

1. Oceans
2. Landsurfaces
3. Forests

The next question is naturally to analyze the actual carbon capture potential of these biomes: 1. oceans, 2. land surfaces, and 3. forests.

Oceans. With largest surface and mass among the three, world’s oceans are already the largest carbon store on earth (save for the subterranean deep carbon in core, mantle, and crust). Through the process of carbonation, oceans already absorb some 30% of all man-made CO₂ emissions every year. Thus, on surface, increasing ocean’s carbon capture appears attractive.

However, when studying this closer it becomes quickly obvious that ocean’s absorption capacity is limited and we have started to cross their limits. You can already see its negative consequences in ocean acidification from the excess carbonic acid. This impacts all marine life forming shells and skeletons (e.g. corals, mollusks, many planktons) and is already disrupting several oceanic nutrient cycles. Most visible impact is the coral reef bleaching (reduction in carbonate ions hinders development of coral’s calcium carbonate structure). Hence, any technology aimed at increasing CO₂ absorption into oceans has a high likelihood of being harmful and is truly a two-edged sword – particularly if done at scale.

Land Surfaces. The second largest mass and surface area are in the world’s land terrains and topsoil. Unfortunately, they fail badly in the third requirement, efficiency. By its nature soil is quite inert: gas-to-solid exchange is very different from gas-to-liquid exchange. Indeed, all the existing techniques for forcing carbon absorption into terrain are difficult and expensive. (There are some interesting, carbon-related agricultural practices that are quite efficient, but their scale is limited due to lack of suitable arable land.)

Thus land biomes capacity to absorb carbon in topsoil is likely to be low. This is true for tundra, deserts, shrublands and grasslands which cover almost all of the non-forest land biomes.

Forests. This leaves forests and interwoven wetlands as the main viable alternative. They also have very large surface areas and heavy mass, and very fortunately turn out to have an efficient technology for capturing carbon – photosynthesis. Indeed, conceptually forest can be thought as the reverse combustion engine: instead of drawing on existing carbon stocks and emitting CO₂ into atmosphere, forests absorb atmospheric CO₂ and store it in inert, usable, solid cellulose fibres.

In addition to the required physical characteristics, they also have a number of other beneficial features:

Societal benefits. Forests bring many secondary benefits in the form of biodiversity, water management, oxygen generation, environmental improvement, multiuse etc.

Proven, efficient technology. Forests’ technology is established and has been thoroughly tested – photosynthesis has been around for about 3.4 billion years. Similarly silvicultural science, the process of growing and cultivating, is well known and established.

Large scale. Forests cover approximately one quarter of the landmass and already absorb about 15.6 billion tons of the emitted carbon dioxide every year– over half of all fossil-fuel based emissions.  (Unfortunately, due to deforestation, fires, and other disturbances forests also release 8.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide, leaving the net absorption at 20% of all anthropogenic emissions.)

Economic. The process is highly economic. When done correctly achieving tree growth is cheap. Furthermore, on those numerous cases when the resulting cellulose, semi-cellulose and timber fibres can be used in the industry, the cost of carbon capture is actually negative.

Thus, after the foundation had studied a myriad of technological options, large scale carbon capture via forests was found to be by far the most attractive prospect. The next question was then to considered the relative opportunity in each of the three forest biomes: Tropical, Temperate, and Boreal forests.

There are three main forest biomes on earth: Tropical, Temperate and Boreal forests. Table below shows each biomes’ area, total carbon stored, carbon storage density, as well as allocation of carbon between vegetation and soil.

Even on just raw numbers, boreal forests are the most important: they contain almost twice the carbon than that of tropical and temperate forests put together. Naturally, size is not the only determining factor, and for a complete view, we analysed each biome through Aurora Forealis’ Seven S’s methodology:

• Opportunity related criteria: Size, Subtype
• Solution related criteria; Solvable, Smart, Scalable
• Foundation related criteria: Suitable, Specific

Tropical forests. In terms of size of opportunity, tropical forests clearly fulfil the criteria. However, the subtype of the problem is not viticulture or even nature related, but economic and societal. This is economics-led deforestation: converting vast areas of “unproductive” forest land into agriculture and animal husbandry, and leads to serious doubts whether it is solvable by outside actors. Furthermore, it is unlikely that any single solution is scalable as each country and region has very different set of constraints. Finally, what quickly became obvious that due to the nature of the problems, there were no suitable nor specific solutions that would make sense for a medium sized foundation like Aurora Forealis.

Temperate forests. In contrast to tropical and boreal forests, the overall opportunity size in temperate forests is relatively small – they account only for 7% of forest carbon. Furthermore, in contrast to large, continuous tropical and boreal biomes, temperate forests are diverse and regionally localized. In term of problem’s subtype, they are generally environmental, and whilst many of these problems are solvable, they are not scalable. In particular, it was hard to find any smart, cost-efficient ways for Aurora Forealis to create meaningful carbon capture programs (Smart, Suitable, Specific)

Boreal forests. Size, contrary to what one would expect, boreal forests create the largest carbon related opportunity among all biomes. With over 1024 billion tons, boreal forests are already by far the largest carbon store with over 60% of the total. They also have the highest capacity for carbon absorption, 408 tons / hectare. This is because despite short growing season, the cold and wet environment creates almost a perfect storage conditions which reduces biomass decay and thus CO₂ release.

In addition to the vast opportunity, the problem subtype is favourable: in contrast to the more difficult problems of tropical and temperate biomes, boreal issues are informational and physical relating to silviculture and forestry practices. Or more specifically either relative lack of them (Russia, Canada) or ready improvements in them (across the region).

These problems thus solvable – and to large extent they have already been solved. Through years the Nordic countries have developed highly advanced “best practices” in forestry, including national forest mappings, digital databases at stand level, deep research in growth models, legal and regulatory framework balancing environment and industry, commercial knowhow in pulp & paper, sawmill, and logging industries, etc. Therefore, whilst there are opportunities in improving best practices, the main opportunity is just in collating, disseminating, and getting the current best practices implemented across the region.

From value (smart) perspective, boreal carbon is also probably one of the best opportunities in CO₂ capture: They create a truly large-scale opportunity, with clear additionality and high cost efficiency – often below USD 10 per ton. Furthermore, in those numerous cases where the resulting cellulose, hemi-cellulose or timber fibers can be productively utilized, the cost of captured carbon is often even negative. Improved forestry practices also leave more primary forests for preservation, and can protect against disturbances (forest fire, insect damage) and thus create avoided emissions.

Among all nature-based carbon capture opportunities, boreal opportunity is also the most scalable. All six countries are advanced economies, have strong central governments, and can enforce their laws and regulations. Therefore, once developed and tested, any adaptation of best practices is highly scalable through legislation, regulation and guidance.

The boreal opportunity is also quite suitable for a small R&D oriented foundation as by far the best opportunity lies in collating existing best practices and getting them scaled through governments and local forestry institutions. From our discussion with various national representatives, it was also apparent that there would be a highly receptive audience for this – in all countries: forests and their health are universally liked. Finally, and somewhat surprisingly, it also turned out that there are very few foundations focusing on boreal region, making the effort even more worthwhile.

Finally, there were very specific opportunities for foundation to work on – these are outlined in the section Boreal Carbon.

The above summarizes our studies and conclusions so far, and thus reasons for our focus and work. Naturally, others may reach different denouements, which may be equally or even more valid. (Indeed, we can give no guarantees that our approach will ultimately even work.) Therefore, we made our reviews also available in detail, hoping that this may help others on their path. If this can enable economic, large-scale carbon capture even by a small bit, that would be delightful.

Below are the links to our more detailed reviews and data: ¹

1. Deep Carbon, Surface Carbon – Earth’s carbon stores and it’s two carbon cycles

When working with any difficult issue, it is important to understand the problem’s broader context. In particular, when considering atmospheric carbon, it is important to understand Earth’s two carbon cycles and Earth’s carbon stores. In the common discourse it is easy to loose sight of the scales involved and mis-judge.

2. Carbon Emissions – Timelapse maps of worldwide CO₂ emissions 1959-present

Similarly, when trying to address the challenges, it is important to understand the problem’s fundamental causes and underlying economics. There is naturally already a lot of data on carbon emissions, and repeating them is not useful. The one new method we found to be insightful was to first review the economics of energy generation, and then compare them to the time lapse maps of carbon emissions from 1959 to present. They are a good way to comprehend the underlying causes – and suggest that attempting to curb CO₂ emissions alone is not going to be enough, even close.

3. Atmospheric Carbon – Carbon Capture from first principles

When looking at solutions in turn, it is important to understand the problem from its first principles. In the case of atmospheric carbon these turn out to be it’s three main physical characteristics: Volume, Sparseness, and Mass. These heavily determine which solutions are likely to work and which are not.

4. Biome Carbon – Carbon in biomes and Why forests are the key
5. Forests’ Carbon – Comparing Tropical / Temperate / Boreal forests

As the atmospheric CO₂‘s physical constraints dictate the effectiveness of various opportunities, it is likely that large-scale absorption can occur mainly in oceans, land surfaces, and forests. By studying each of the biomes in detail, it is readily apparent why forests that are the key. We analysed each of these biomes using their physical characteristics and from program perspective using Aurora Forealis’ Seven S’s criteria. ² Same methodology was used in the choice of which forest biome to ultimately concentrate on.

6. Boreal Carbon – Opportunities in biome wide silviculture

The above analysis lead to our current focus on boreal forests. Naturally, ideas and concepts are probably less that 1% of any real solution – implementation and concrete work are the 99%. The section on Boreal Forest Carbon explains the current programs and work undertaken at the Aurora Forealis foundation.

1. These can also be accessed through the site’s menu. ↩︎
2. At Aurora Forealis, we have developed an internal framework Seven S’s to analyse programs and opportunities. The framework is naturally not limited to forests nor atmospheric carbon, and can be used in any foundation’s analysis. For a more detailed outline of it see
   Seven S’s – methodology for analysing programs and opportunities
   ↩︎