Following a number of devastating fire years in the West, a number of states are funding efforts to clear out forests. Remove undergrowth, cut down trees, or use controlled burns to break up the landscape and prevent fires from reaching forest crowns.
States are expected to produce more and more forest waste from these efforts as climate change is expected to accelerate in the coming years according to the managing director of the Yale Carbon Containment Lab.
Plants and trees are piled up in cleared areas and left to rot. The carbon stored in them can be returned to the atmosphere.
The emissions challenge and the wildfire dangers are addressed by Kodama. The company says it is developing automated ways to thin out overcrowded forests that will be cheaper and faster, though it is not yet discussing this part of the business in detail. After removing limbs from trees that are too small to be sold for timber, they will load them into trucks and send them to a pit.
Ensuring that what the company refers to as a "wood vault" keeps out oxygen and water will be the key.
The company plans to create a burial mound in the Nevada desert that is seven yards high, three yards deep, and 58 yards across in the third quarter of next year.
They plan to cover the plant with a liner and bury it under the soil and native vegetation. The dry conditions in the region will create a contained system that prevents agents of decomposition from acting on the buried wood mass, so that the carbon stays in place for thousands of years.
Freiberg says that they will leave wood exposed at the site and make smaller side vaults. The teams will keep an eye on them and compare the rates of decomposition. Long-term carbon storage estimates from that data are expected to be used by the teams.
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