Launch HN: Living Carbon (YC W20) – Trees that capture and store more carbon
Very interesting work and it's cool to see glimpses of the future in biotechnology. How would this technology get to gigaton-scale carbon removal?<p>It seems that the options to use the trees to sequester carbon are to #1 leave them as live forest, #2 cut them down and use them for wood, or #3 convert the biomass to biochar or bio-oil and sequester it, before regrowing new trees. (slightly different schema than ZYinMD's comment)<p>#1 would require covering large land areas with your trees. Do you know how much land? It seems that could displace natural forests. Reforestation projects with native trees offer the possibility of restoring native ecosystems eventually. These trees would store more carbon per acre, but at the cost of permanently displacing native trees from that land. You mention reforesting mine land and other degraded land, which seems like a great idea - how much CO2 can you sequester with that sort of land alone?<p>For #2, unless you can increase total world wood production it seems like there wouldn't be a climate impact, because all wood produced today is already sequestering carbon.<p>#3 might work but you don't mention it. Biochar and bio-oil don't necessarily require poplars. The figure of merit for plants grown for biomass would be $/kg of biomass, or kg/acre. Based some of the discussion it sounds like empress trees or other even faster growing plants could produce more biomass, and for this application might be better suited.<p>Sorry about being late to the party!