The Tree Farms Powering Tech Companies’ Carbon Neutral Goals ⇥ technologyreview.com

Apple, earlier this month:

Apple today announced that the company has surpassed a 60 percent reduction in its global greenhouse gas emissions compared to 2015 levels, as part of its Apple 2030 goal to become carbon neutral across its entire footprint in the next five years. The company achieved several other major environmental milestones, including the use of 99 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets and 99 percent recycled cobalt in all Apple-designed batteries. Apple shared this and other progress in its annual Environmental Progress Report, published today.

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Apple’s 2030 strategy prioritizes cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent compared with its 2015 baseline year, before applying high-quality carbon credits to balance the remaining emissions. Last year, Apple’s comprehensive efforts to reduce its carbon footprint — including the continued transition of its supply chain to renewable electricity and designing products with more recycled materials — avoided an estimated 41 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

The phrasing of Apple’s 2030 goals is slightly different than when announced, when it said 25% of its emissions would be offset by “developing innovative carbon removal solutions”. Turns out, that is planting trees.

Gregory Barber, MIT Technology Review:

On a practical level, the answer seemed straightforward. Nobody disputed how swiftly or reliably eucalyptus could grow in the tropics. This knowledge was the product of decades of scientific study and tabulations of biomass for wood or paper. Each tree was roughly 47% carbon, which meant that many tons of it could be stored within every planted hectare. This could be observed taking place in real time, in the trees by the road. Come back and look at these young trees tomorrow, and you’d see it: fresh millimeters of carbon, chains of cellulose set into lignin.

At the same time, Apple and the others were also investing in an industry, and a tree, with a long and controversial history in this part of Brazil and elsewhere. They were exerting their wealth and technological oversight to try to make timber operations more sustainable, more supportive of native flora, and less water intensive. Still, that was a hard sell to some here, where hundreds of thousands of hectares of pasture are already in line for planting; more trees were a bleak prospect in a land increasingly racked by drought and fire. Critics called the entire exercise an excuse to plant even more trees for profit.

This is a long and detailed exploration of how these projects work. I think is worth your time in part because of how captivating it is in words and, indeed, in photographs. I learned plenty.