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Transport and Greenhouse Gases

The transport sector is responsible for around 15% of total Australian greenhouse gas emissions each year. TreeSmart Australia offsets greenhouse emissions from transport activities (e.g. driving, flying, other travel) by funding the planting, management, harvesting and replanting of farm forestry indigenous plantations (eucalypt, wattle and other local species). Research has shown that the use of harvested plantations for carbon sequestration is a method of offsetting that is economically and environmentally sustainable.

Conference Travel

TreeSmart Australia offsets greenhouse gas emissions for delegates travel to and from conferences by funding the establishment and management of farm forestry indigenous plantations. A few dollars per delegate can make your conference "travel carbon neutral".

The MAORI model of Carbon Neutrality

While TreeSmart is primarily involved in offsetting, it advises that such offsetting should be seen in the context of an overall process for seeking Carbon Neutrality.

TreeSmart has developed, and uses, the MAORI model of Carbon Neutrality, within which offsetting plays a central role:

Measure - calculate the size of your current carbon footprint Avoid - remove those carbon-intensive activities that are easy to avoid (the "low hanging fruit") Offset - this year, offset your remaining greenhouse emissions Reduce - then proceed to work on reducing or removing those carbon-intensive activities that are not so easy to avoid Iterate - at the end of the year, go back round and do it all again next year

A successful Carbon-Neutrality strategy using the MAORI model will see you carbon neutral this year, and then progressively reducing your reliance on offsetting as you are able to reduce and remove more carbon-intensive activities over the longer-term.

Why Harvested Plantations?

Unlike many other carbon offset programs which only use unharvested revegetation plantings, TreeSmart uses farm forestry plantations that are integrated into the rural countryside as part of an overall whole-farm management plan. Such properties often also contain significant areas of remnant trees and revegetation plantings, but it is the harvested plantations that provide the "powerhouse" of the sequestration process, now and into the future. The plantations also provide a useful source of income for farmers wishing to diversity as a means of staying on the land.

The key to the value of harvested plantations for sequestration is twofold.
Firstly, there is a recognition that carbon continues to be sequestered in the wood from the trees long after they have been harvested. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which assumes that the carbon dioxide sequestered by a tree when it is growing is immediately released back into the atmosphere when it is harvested, the TreeSmart program recognises that carbon continues to be stored in timber products after harvest, and can also reduce emissions from coal-fired power generation if the residue from the harvest (70% of the volume of the harvested tree) is used for bioenergy production.

The second key to the value of harvested plantations for sequestration is that periodic harvesting replaces trees that have essentially stopped growing (and hence sequestering) with new trees that will sequester far more carbon dioxide over the coming years than the older trees that they have replaced.

What can you do about Global Warming?

If you are a farmer who is growing, or thinking about growing, a farm forestry plantation, then you can register your trees with TreeSmart and receive an annual payment for the carbon that your trees sequester each year. Just check out the TreeSmart website.

If you are a traveller, and who isn't, then you can immediately offset your greenhouse emissions for this year, while you investigate other ways of reducing your emissions. For example, not everyone can buy a Hybrid car this year, or move house so that you can be nearer to public transport. But while you are looking at these longer-term options, you can immediately offset this year's emissions for which you are responsible. Again, just check out the TreeSmart website.

As an indication of TreeSmart subscription costs, you can offset your car for one year for $50, and offset your air flights for about $6 per thousand kilometres.

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