This week the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) announced participating airlines would be able to buy carbon credits from two approved programmes to offset airliner emissions. Meantime, countries they bought the credits off would reduce their deforestation accordingly.
Known as nature-based credits and created under a United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), the scheme targets developing nations that are not obliged under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
But University of Canterbury professor of forestry Euan Mason says while such a scheme will mean less deforestation in those developing countries, it did not allow airlines to claim green house gas neutrality.
“It just means the airlines are emitting instead of those who are cutting down the trees,” he said.
“Sure we want deforestation to stop, but the credits do not allow any company to claim they are greenhouse gas neutral – they can continue to emit as they always have.”
In a statement the ICAO says the move was an important signal to countries that halting deforestation and restoring degraded ecosystems was urgent, making the global aviation industry a leader in “nature-based solutions.”
But Mason says unless previously unforested land was going into new tree plantings, with a net increase in tree area, the scheme would not achieve reductions in emissions.
In New Zealand, Air New Zealand is a partner with Z Energy, Genesis and Contact Energy, in Dryland Carbon, with plantings of new country into trees in an effort to sequester carbon.
“If they are planting new forests to absorb carbon, it is far more credible and those companies can rightly claim they are reducing their carbon with more trees,” Mason said.
So far the company has established forests in Northland, Wairoa, Wairarapa, Taranaki and Kaikoura. It has about 5700ha under management, including 1600ha Te Puna station near Wairoa.
Chief executive Anthony Beverley says he was conscious of the sensitivities in rural communities over exotic tree planting for carbon sequestration.
“But from the start we have targeted marginal land that is suited to trees. But we do not want emitters to use pine trees to get out of jail in terms of emissions. Those emitting should also be incentivised to use technology to reduce emissions,” Beverley said.
The aviation industry has been trialling options including alternative fuel types and electric engines, but hydrocarbons appear likely to remain the mainstay for some years yet.
The company’s portfolio includes a significant portion as either established indigenous forest or reverting indigenous, alongside exotic plantings.
Beverley says since the global pandemic there has been a significant lift in consumer consciousness about carbon emissions from the travel sector.
“That level of awareness means people may be choosing not to fly, or will use Zoom instead, but no doubt a portion of travel is unavoidable and that needs to be offset. If forestry is an answer, it should be an option.”
Opposition to forestry plantings purely for carbon emissions have been growing, but Beverley says Dryland has the option to fell trees.
“The concept of permanent pines was sexy early on. That has changed. Of the seven properties we own, six of them are rotation forests,” he said.
He says the company’s Te Puna Station in Wairoa of the 1600ha, 900ha is planted – the rest is not suitable and has been left to revert. Some farmland has also been retained in the boundary.
In contrast, NZ Carbon Farming do not harvest trees and maintain by planting less than 0.5% of NZ’s marginal land, they can achieve 20% of NZ’s emissions target.
Mason says NZ is entering an interesting phase of its forestation process as carbon prices start to top the $35 a tonne mark.
The CommTrade carbon trading site has contracts out to April 2025 rising to $42.
“At these prices a lot of planting for carbon will be more desirable financially than to harvest it, depending on the location,” he said.
“Planting for carbon becomes a financial proposition over this price – below it, it still pays to take the cost on the credits and sell as timber.”
Mason says beyond $35 it could become an option for farmers to plant for carbon.
“Until now they may have been put off planting trees to harvest on remote areas of their farm, where extraction would be expensive,” he said.
He pointed out NZ’s carbon prices still sit significantly below those of other countries like Sweden at US$126 a tonne, and Finland at about US$80/t.
