Abstract
The theoretical potential for carbon forests to off-set greenhouse gas emissions may be high but the achievable rate is influenced by a range of economic and social factors. Economic returns (net present value, NPV) were calculated spatially across the cleared land area in Australia for ‘environmental carbon plantings’. A total of 105 scenarios were run by varying discount rate, carbon price, rate of carbon sequestration and costs for plantation establishment licenses for water interception. The area for which NPV was positive ranged from zero ha for tightly constrained scenarios to almost the whole of the cleared land (104 M ha) for lower discount rate and highest carbon price. For the most plausible assumptions for cost of establishment and commercial discount rate, no areas were identified as profitable until a carbon price of AUD$40 t CO2 −1 was reached. The many practical constraints to plantation establishment mean that it will likely take decades to have significant impact on emission reductions. Every 1 M ha of carbon forests established would offset about 1.4 % of Australia’s year 2000 emissions (or 7.4 Mt CO2 year−1) when an average rate of sequestration per ha was reached. All studies that predict large areas of potentially profitable land for carbon forestry need to be tempered by the realities that constrain land use change. In Australia and globally, carbon plantings can be a useful activity to help mitigate emissions and restore landscapes but it should be viewed as a long-term project in which co-benefits such as biodiversity enhancement can be realised.
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Acknowledgments
This research is a reanalysis of previous assessments funded in part by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. Most of the growth modelling originated from the Commercial Environmental Forestry program of research, funded in part by the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. We again thank all those who assisted with those projects. We are grateful to all those who had subsequent input and helped to refine the research questions and revise the methodology and assumptions, particularly Peter Cosier and Claire Parkes from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, who facilitated much of the stakeholder interaction. We are grateful to Don Butler for providing the spatial data from the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management for areas of cleared land for Australia. We thank Neville Crossman, Tony O’Grady and Lu Zhang from CSIRO and Luke Barry from SCION for useful reviews.
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Polglase, P.J., Reeson, A., Hawkins, C.S. et al. Potential for forest carbon plantings to offset greenhouse emissions in Australia: economics and constraints to implementation. Climatic Change 121, 161–175 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-0882-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-0882-5