As part of the biome group analysis, it is important to consider the relative importance of surface layer carbon stores. The table below shows the current levels in Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Terrestrial (in billion tons).

Atmosphere – the main concern in climate change – actually holds the smallest total amount, about 860 billion tons of carbon. Therefore, in addition to the flows, one has to critically consider the biome’s carbon stock when analysing the potential capture opportunity in:

1. Oceans
2. Land surfaces, and
3. Forests

With the largest mass and surface, world’s oceans are largest store of carbon on earth (save the deep carbon in earth’s core, mantle and lithospheric crust). Through the process of carbonation, oceans already absorb about 30 % of all man-made CO₂ emissions every year.

Therefore, the “blue carbon capture” initially appeared promising. However, when this path was pursued further, it turned out that ocean’s absorption capacity is limited, and we can already see the negative consequences – ocean acidification from excess carbonic acid. This impacts all marine life forming shells and skeletons (corals, mollusks, and many planktons) and already disrupts several oceanic nutrient cycles. Most visible impact of this 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 truly a two-edged sword – particularly if done at scale.

The second largest mass and surface area is in the world’s land terrains and topsoil. Unfortunately, all existing techniques forcing carbon absorption into terrain are difficult and expensive – by its nature soil is quite inert. There is little promise in increased vegetation, as can be seen in the below table, but land biomes capacity to absorb carbon above ground is very low. This is true in tundra, deserts, shrublands and grasslands, which cover almost the entirety of land biomes. Our research work did uncover some interesting, carbon-related agricultural practices which are quite efficient, but their scalability is highly limited due to lack of suitable arable land, and relatively high cost.

Current carbon storage in the seven land and forest biomes.

World’s biomes: total area, carbon stocks, and annual rainfall (one of the main variables determining growth rates).

Carbon absorption capacity tons/hectare in the world’s biomes

Therefore, this left forests and interwoven wetlands as the only viable alternative.

Forests also have very large surface areas and intrinsic mass, and very fortunately turn out to have a many positive attributes for large-scale carbon capture:

1. Forests’ technology is established and thoroughly tested – photosynthesis has been around for about 3.4 billion years.
2. They can operate at truly large scale – forests already absorb about 15.6 billion tons of 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).
3. The process is highly economic – growing trees is relatively cheap, and when the resulting wood fiber is used in industry, the cost of carbon capture is actually negative.
4. Forest growth also brings many secondary benefits such as biodiversity, environmental improvements, multiuse etc.
5. Silvicultural science on forest growth is relatively well known and established.

Indeed, forests are conceptually 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 fibers.  

Thus, large scale carbon capture via forests is by far the most attractive prospect. The next analysis to consider therefore is the suitability of each of the three forest biomes: Tropical, Temperate, and Boreal forests.

The following table shows the forest biomes’ area, total carbon storage, carbon density, and the allocation of how carbon is stored between vegetation and soil.

Even on the raw numbers, boreal is the most important forest biome. It contains almost twice the carbon than that of the tropical and temperate forests put together.

Naturally, size is not the only determining factor for an opportunity, and to get a comprehensive view, we analyzed each biome through Aurora Forealis’ Seven S’s methodology.

• Opportunity related criteria
  1. Size
  2. Subtype

• Solution related criteria
  3. Solvable
  4. Smart
  5. Scalable

• Foundation related criteria
  6. Suitable
  7. Specific

Tropical forest biome

Size. Size is the first opportunity related criteria. Indeed, among the forest biomes, tropical forests have received by far the most attention. They cover an area of over 1700 million hectares and contain 471 billion tons carbon. Most of this carbon, 320 billion tons, is stored in the above ground vegetation. Tropical forests also have the highest growth rates and species biodiversity among all the world’s biomes. Thus the size of the opportunity is clear. ¹

Subtype: The second opportunity related criteria is type. In tropics this forest problem is not a silvicultural or a nature related problem at all. It is economic and societal. As is well known – and quickly became apparent form our discussions with specialist organizations – this is economics-led deforestation: converting vast areas of “unproductive” forest land into revenue producing agriculture and animal husbandry. The economics are driven by soybeans and cattle Brazil, palm oil in Indonesia.

Furthermore, the issue is generally not even about lack of national laws, for example in Brazil the nature related legal protections are quite sound. The problem is generally enforcement, and the overall governance weakness of federal and regional governments.

Solvable: Therefore the real question and main problem is whether this is solvable by outsiders. Over USD 5 billion have already been pledged by western governments and large corporations on REDD+ programs – but it is highly unclear what the successes are. ² The main problems continue to be:

• Limited Impact on Forest Cover: Despite efforts, REDD+ has generally not succeeded in significantly reducing overall forest cover loss. They also have very mixed results across different regions and projects.
• Economic Ineffectiveness: The financial incentives provided are often very insufficient to compete with the profits driving the deforestation, cattle ranching and commercial agriculture.
• Governance and Implementation Challenges: There continues to be serious implementation problems such as inadequate community involvement, inequitable benefit-sharing, and too complex governance structures. Many programs have disrupted local socio-cultural systems and livelihoods, leading to unintended consequences for forest-dependent communities.

Overall, while there have been some successes, the general consensus is that REDD+ programs face significant challenges that need to be addressed for them to be able to combat deforestation and forest degradation.

Scalable, Smart: Given the difficulty of determining how and whether the problem can be solved, there is doubt about scalability, especially given the costs involved. The problem is also highly heterogenous between different nations, and as the below table shows, tropical forests cover a multitude of nations, continents and conditions. There clearly is no single solution, and no apparent ‘smart” one. ³

Table of tropical forest countries: total area and carbon stocks:

Suitable, Specific: However, what became most obvious from all these discussions was that this problem was not suitable for a small R&D foundation with limited resources, and that Aurora Forealis had no specific advantages in the tropical biome.

1. From a climate perspective their importance has increased in the last decades as they have turned from carbon sink to carbon source. Their annual emissions are over 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide (about 500 million tons carbon). Of the three tropical regions – Amazon basin in Latin America, Kongo basin in Africa, and tropical East Asia – only Kongo basin acts as a carbon sink today. ↩︎
2. Mainly Norway, Germany, United Kingdom and United States. ↩︎
3. Areas which are often protected are often not the most endangered – they are often ones which are cheapest to protect, i.e. least endangerd. ↩︎

Temperate forest biome

Size. Opportunities in temperate zone are much smaller than those in tropical and boreal biomes.  Temperate forests cover the smallest area, account only for 7% of total carbon storage, and have the least carbon absorption capacity per hectare. Furthermore, in contrast to large, continuous tropical and boreal biomes, temperate forests are diverse and regionally quite spotty and localized. Therefore, from carbon capture perspective, their opportunity set is much smaller.

Subtype. The problems are generally environmental and there is no single overarching problem to solve. For example, temperate forests are not experiencing the type of deforestation as tropics. Their opportunities relate to reforestation of abandoned agricultural lands, and problems to protection and nature conservancy. All these problems are generally local. Environmentally and species wise temperate zone is heterogeneous, covers multitude of countries and regulatory frameworks.

Solvable, Smart, Scalable, Suitable, Specific.  Therefore, 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 large carbon capture programs. Furthermore, solutions that existed often just required money, and are thus not suitable for a small, resource constrained foundation. Finally, Aurora Forealis appeared to have no competitive advantage as such, say in comparison to foundations like Nature Conservancy.

Table 6. Boreal forest biome – total area and carbon stocks by country

The effect of northern forests can be seen in seasonal atmospheric fluctuations: during the northern summer period (May-October) the CO₂ level drops by about 7 ppm.

Size. Contrary to what one would expect, boreal forests create the largest carbon related opportunity among all the forest biomes. With over 1024 billion tons, boreal forests are 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. ¹

Boreal forests are also the world’s single largest continuous biome, covering over 1200 million hectares of land. From a climate perspective its importance is even higher if we also consider the bordering/overlapping tundra biome. Its frozen permafrost contains over 1700 billion tons of carbon (twice of ALL carbon in atmosphere), and this arctic region is warming four times faster than the rest of the world.

In terms of countries, Russia accounts for great majority of both the boreal and tundra region and is the biggest opportunity from climate carbon perspective. ² [2] If we account only taiga, Russia holds 430 billion tons of carbon – almost half of ALL carbon in atmosphere. If permafrost is included, it contains 1480 billion tons – twice of ALL carbon in the atmosphere. A loss of less than 6% of this will wipe out the entire remaining global carbon budget.

Subtype. In addition to the vast opportunity, the problem type is also quite favorable: in contrast to the more difficult problems of tropical and temperate biomes, boreal issues are informational and physical. As we learned through discussions with foresters and forestry research institutes the problems relate to silviculture and forestry practices – or more specifically either relative lack of them (Russia, Canada) or ready improvements in them (across the region).

Solutions in boreal are also helped by homogeneity in its environments and fauna, fact that there are only six countries to consider (Russia, Canda, U.S. Alaska, Norway, Sweden and Finland), and almost all the problems across the region are the same: be it the disturbances (mainly forest fires, to smaller extent insects), or the need for better silviculture and forestry practices (harvesting, replanting, fire prevention, fertilization etc.).

Solvable. The problems in the boreal region are also 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 also opportunities for improving these best practices, the main opportunity is in collating, disseminating, and getting the current best practices implemented across the region, particularly in Russia.

Smart. From a value of money perspective, boreal carbon is probably one of the best opportunities in CO2 capture: When the wood fibers are used in industry the cost of capturing carbon is negative. Furthermore, improved forestry practices in commercial forests leave more primary forests for preservation, and again quite cheap carbon capture. Improved forestry practices will also protect against disturbances (forest fire, insect damage) and thus create avoided emissions.

Scalable. Among all nature-based carbon capture opportunities, boreal opportunity is 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.

Suitable. 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 (Woodwell Climate Research Center, CPAWS, few others), making the effort even more worthwhile.

Specific.  Finally, there was a specific opportunity for foundation to work on, an approach described below.

1. Thus almost 90% of total carbon is stored Boreal forests soil, 912 billion tons. ↩︎
2. Russia overall accounts for about 20 percent of the world’s total forest area. ↩︎