Woodlands and climate change

So what is it that wood and woodlands has to offer in tackling climate change?

The trees

At New Caledonian Woodlands, we like native woodlands, woodlands made up of only the trees which have grown here for thousands of years. We like native woodlands because they seem to fit the landscape and they are home to many plants and animals which would struggle to survive otherwise. Ancient native woodlands are complex ecosystems that only come into being if given enough time to do so – we are talking centuries here, not decades. So the protection of existing native woodlands and the creation of new ones is important to us and to the environment – because they are valuable and they are rare. For these reasons, we plant mainly native species like oak, ash, gean, rowan, birch and hazel.

However, we also like other trees like beech, Norway maple, larch and Douglas fir. There can be a role for them too. You can build traditional boats out of larch and houses out of Douglas fir. Use of these timbers helps us to replace non-timber products such as concrete, brick and fibreglass. In so doing, they allow us to reduce the embedded energy of many of the objects which are part of our daily lives and whose environmental impact we rarely consider.

The timber

We believe that you can have your wooden cake and eat it. You can plant and look after woodlands where a proportion of the trees are straight with few low branches, growing valuable timber. As they grow they take carbon dioxide from the air and capture it in their trunks, branches and roots.

When these trees are felled to make way for others (as trees don’t live forever), their timber can be sold and this income can be used to manage native woodlands and to create new ones, while allowing amenity improvements to take place for the benefit of nearby communities. Then the timber can be converted into beautiful or practical objects (and often both) such as tables, chairs, beams, joists, boxes, tool handles, hockey sticks and so on. The carbon dioxide remains locked up as long as the timber product continues to exist. Then it is slowly released.

A continuing cycle

Meanwhile, the tree which has taken the place of the one which has been felled, is busy converting more carbon dioxide into wood. Eventually it all balances out which is why we say that trees are carbon neutral, unlike any constructed product.

Fuelwood

The same is true of fuelwood, it’s just that the lockup time is reduced. Every log you burn in your stove, or every chip or pellet, is almost carbon neutral. It takes some petrol, diesel and electricity to bring the wood from the tree to your stove but it is very little compared with the fossil energy in oil, gas, coal and electricity.

So if you reduce your gas consumption by 50% by installing a log stove and running it to complement your central heating, the saving in your carbon footprint will be almost that 50%. Add in some top notch insulation and some energy efficiency measures and you may find that you hardly have to switch on your gas, oil or electric heating at all.

Reduced greenhouse gas emissions

If everyone in Scotland, on average, could switch to some form of wood energy from some form of fossil fuel energy for half their needs, this would save 7 ½ million tonnes of carbon dioxide production every year, based on 2002 figures. This would represent a 17% cut in our carbon footprint.

The history

When our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, wandering through the wildwood hunting prey or foraging for wild food, their lives were dominated by wood. They slept in shelters made out of poles covered in turf or animal skins. They protected themselves and cooked their food on fires. They made their weapons and tools from wood, tipped with stone or strung with animal gut. They knew their trees and the qualities of timber from different trees far better than we do today.

This knowledge persisted for a long time and even at the start of the Industrial Revolution, we used wood in far more ways than we do today. Gradually, other materials such as cement, metals and plastics, often made using large amounts of cheap energy, came to replace wood and the amount of wood in our lives shrunk.

At the same time though, we came to appreciate other benefits of woodlands:

As habitat for plants and animals (which we feel a bit guilty about eradicating elsewhere);
As a place to walk our dogs (another hunter-gatherer trait), ride our horses and bikes;
As interesting shapes, textures and colours in the landscape;
As screening for ugly man-made structures, such as buildings and roads;
As shelter for crops, livestock and people forced out of the forest into windswept, open spaces;
As a place to collect firewood (definitely a hunter-gatherer thing).

People known as foresters became adept at managing woodlands to produce timber and achieve as many of these benefits at the same time as possible. Or at least some of them do! This is what we strive for at New Caledonian Woodlands.