In the UK we began decimating our trees in the iron age, and they remain severely depleted. Fast grown commercial softwood plantations do very little to restore the balance, here or anywhere else, as well as supporting virtually no other plant or animal species, making them extremely damaging to biodiversity.
Planting more trees than we fell is, in reality, just greenwash used to try to justify modern forestry. If you want to lock up serious quantities of carbon, you need mature forests, which continue to be felled at alarming rates where they still exist.
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While Mikeās original posted fact is a positive sign, it is a tiny national thing that is swamped by the macro Earth picture of rising GHG emissions.
The UK is part of a global economy and the graph/fact Mike originally noted is mainly a reflection of how good the UK is at exporting its emissions to export processing zones and other parts of the Earth.
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Where I live in the Cotswolds, Stroud Valleys, the landscape was radically changed during WWI - wooded hillsides and valleys were clear felled to support the war effort. The landscape changes as a result of human activity - addressing the balance with trees will take generations.
I believe the UK has fewer trees than any where else in the EU; ok, we are an island, nevertheless fewer hectares of woodland than our neighbours is not good for biodiversity. At last the Forestry Commission is correctly the plantation effect; where they clear fell conifers now, natural regeneration of native species is encouraged as well as replanting with native hardwoods.
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Another extract from The Land (24, 2019). Apologies for lack of digital copy. This one discusses grass as a biofuel.
I live at the southern edge of the greater oolite (the southern edge of the Cotswold series), and here we have very little forestry, however we do tend to have a lot of smaller mixed environments in close proximity and fields that are, in general smaller than many other parts of the country. While still not ideal (it would be beneficial to have a larger proportion of native woodland and wood marginal environments), this mixed environment is still not an ecological disaster zone.
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Temperate environmental production rates are difficult to predict accurately as they vary so much depending on the precise location and the weather / local climate. Transposing a figure from one area to another without actual pilot scale research is unlikely to be reliable.
Measurement of the amount of carbon fixed is, however, quite easy: no matter what vegetable material is concerned, the greatest proportion of the dried mass harvested is composed of carbohydrates and lignin (with considerably lower contributions from proteins and lipids); thus the mass of carbon can be reasonably estimated from the simple raw dry mass figure.
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When I was planning my small woodland some 10 years ago, advice I had from the FC was that I should source my saplings from a nursery that was similar in distance from the sea and elevation as my proposed location. This was to mitigate climate change! An impossibility - the willow came from Yorkshire and the hardwoods from Berkeley. The choice of saplings was based upon the local geology and soil profiles, and guidance from my forestry lecturer at RAU, tips from friendly foresters, and words of wisdom from Ken Broad (caring for small woods), Ben Law (the woodland way), and Cyril Hart (practical forestry). Conservation advice came from my local wildlife trust.
My little wood is adjacent to a SSSI, but the natural beechwoods are in decline from pressure due to climate change (both rising temperatures and increasing rainfall) - hence the mix of willow and hardwood interspersed with grassland glades to accommodate the orchids.
It has long been an ambition of the wildlife trusts in SW England to encourage habitat corridors - grassland, hedgerows and woodland - to improve connectivity across the landscape. This is a long term objective - but every little bit contributes to biodiversity and the strength of the ecosystems.
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At the risk of being banned from the forum , Iād like to point out that the UK is not the centre of the universe, and thatās from someone born there, who often visits, and has mostly lived elsewhere.
As someone who agrees that the UK is not the centre of the Universe, I find your post a little strange.
The fact that this thread is entitled āUK Power edges towards renewablesā should perhaps be a clue that the thread is likely to focus on the UK.
I have no idea of where you are based, but there could quite easily be another thread entitled āUS Power shifts sharply away from renewables - President T does not believe in themā. This thread, if it were to be started by a forum member might perhaps equally understandably focus on the US.
Actually, in the US, renewables are currently surpassing coal in terms of energy generated. In spite of current policy, not because of it.
A very strange post, aside from the thread title indicating this was supposed be about UK, & nowhere else. I was also intending it to be some positive news that it might be showing signs that the UK is getting to grips with power generation pollution.
Positive news ??? fat chance, we do seem to have a lot of glass empty folks on this forum.
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On what is perhaps a Slightly different but not unrelated note, I have never quite understood the āthereās no point doing anything cos Chinaā¦ā argument. If nobody does anything, we all end up in a bigger mess
The glass isnāt half empty,
the glass isnāt half full,
the glass has a 100% safety margin.
Youāre an engineer, you should understand this! 
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I prefer to view the glass as refillable 
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Donāt take my word for it then
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Chris, there are two points in your post that arenāt quite that simpleā¦
From the point of biodiversity, yes they donāt restore balance; from the point of carbon capture fast growing softwood is more effective than hardwood.
Young trees are too small to capture so much carbon, older mature trees are too slow growing; the most effective carbon capture is by tress in their fast growing ālate teenageā years.
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Thatās all very well, but this optimistic article says that we have the potential to plant lots of trees. What we are actually doing is the opposite, i.e. reducing the number of trees globally. On top of that, most of the trees we grow are then cut down again before they even reach full maturity, and as a lot of them are burnt, the carbon soon ends up going straight back into the atmosphere as CO2 just a few years later, which makes it worse than doing nothing once you take into account the energy used in felling, transporting and processing the timber. Even this article still points out that āā¦it remains vital to reverse the current trends of rising greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction, and bring them down to zero. He said this is needed to stop the climate crisis becoming even worse and because the forest restoration envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn tonnes of carbonā
So whilst I agree that planting a lot of trees would be a very good idea, Iām sticking with the view that it itās essential that we donāt then burn them. Thatās on top of the point that large scale commercial forestry is a damaging form of monoculture, and any reforestation needs to be done in a way that also helps to reverse the very rapid extinction rates we are causing.
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Yes, it takes a little time before these trees really start to lock up serious amount of carbon. All the more reason not to cut the poor things down just as they reach maturity.
Iāll refer back to my earlier post, concerning Drax power station and itās claims to green credentials, having moved from coal to biomass burning, and the origin of these biomass pellets, which still need to be transported from Canada to the UK, and then from the port of entry to Drax.
So, letās plant loads of trees, by all means, but letās not be fooled by industry eco-claims, if itās largely to satisfy the ever growing use of biomass to provide our electricity.
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Indeed, burning them in Canada would be bad enough, never mind transporting them thousands of miles to burn them here.
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