Poplar groves: great allies in the fight against climate change

This coming December, the Climate Summit is being held in Madrid in order to address one of the greatest challenges facing humanity: the fight against climate change. Poplar plantations are great natural allies. Even the Spanish Office for Climate Change (OECC) and the Ministry for Ecological Transition have recognized that the 2021-2030 National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan proposes promoting the cultivation of this tree species instead of other crops in flood-prone areas. As stated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the concentration of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere has reached an all-time high. And there are no indications that this trend, which is triggering long-term climate change, will be reversed. According to the WMO, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased from 401 parts per million in 2015 to 405.5 parts per million in 2017. The science on this is clear: if we do not quickly reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will have increasingly destructive and irreversible consequences for life on this planet. Faced with this scenario, the planet’s inhabitants must use all available means to put the brakes on this situation. And one of these solutions is in the natural habitat itself. Forestry plantations capture CO2, converting it and retaining it in their tissue as carbon. These plantations have enormous potential in the fight against climate change. This article, recently published in Science magazine, calculates that 200 gigatons of carbon can be captured through reforestation. This is at least 25% of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere and 2/3 of anthropogenic emissions. Obviously, as numerous scientists indicate, this cannot be the only solution, and its effect is not immediate, since this kind of initiative has to be accompanied by both short- and long-term reductions in emissions. Nevertheless, the importance of the major role forestry plantations can play in the fight against climate change has been completely proven. And among tree plantations, poplar groves have enormous potential in the fight against climate change in Spain, thanks to their rapid growth and the potential use of their wood in value-added products with a long useful life, such as plywood panels. Of the main forestry species produced in Spain, especially in Castilla and Leon, poplar stands out above the rest for its potential for absorbing CO2, according to data from the Ministry for Ecological Transition. Two thirds of the total area of Spain’s poplar groves are located in Castilla y León. One poplar absorbs 20 times more CO2 than a Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) or a Holm oak (Quercus ilex L.), which are the most abundant conifer and deciduous trees in this Autonomous Community. Plywood panels are the main product obtained from poplar wood in Spain. Now, the wood used to produce one cubic meter of plywood panels from Efficiency Poplar is calculated to have captured 793 kg of CO2, as confirmed in this graph that uses data from Föra, a consulting firm founded at the University of Valladolid that specializes in the forestry sector. To give us an idea, by comparison that equates to capturing the emissions from 3,000 km of travel by car.