Stephen Strauss was skeptical when he first heard that poplar trees were bioengineered to absorb more carbon dioxide from the air.
An expert in forest biotechnology, he knew it would be difficult to genetically engineer trees. He also knew that the “tender and loving care” of the laboratory was no substitute for the outside world. So when two entrepreneurs asked him to help test their ideas, Strauss was intrigued, but he hesitated.
“If it works, that would be great,” he said at the time. [that] say nothing. ”
Four years later, these entrepreneurs Maddie Hall and Patrick Mellor aim to plant four to five million poplar trees by spring 2024 using “photosynthetically enhanced” seeds. Ultimately, the company hopes to enter the carbon offset market and sell the credits to companies that need to reach net-zero emissions targets.
One of the field trials will be conducted in the Oregon State University forest. At this university, Mr. Strauss is a Distinguished Professor of Forest Biotechnology. Other locations are across the United States, including an abandoned mine site in Pennsylvania with degraded soil.
Co-founders Hall and Mellor hope trials will prove that tall trees can store as much as 27% more CO2.2 than ordinary poplar.The next step for the company is that CO2 It can be stored in timber or plywood and outlasts poplar’s lifespan of up to 200 years.
The Department of Energy, which gave Living Carbon a $500,000 grant in 2021, estimated that the company’s approach could remove billions of tons of CO.2 From the atmosphere if scaled up successfully. Since then, it has attracted investors such as Toyota Ventures and Singapore’s state-owned Temasek.
Lisa Coca, partner at Toyota Ventures Climate Fund, said the voluntary carbon credit market could exceed $50 billion by 2030, but that’s not to say that large amounts of credit will become available in the near future. only if it becomes Living Carbon, she claimed, could provide credit within the next three to five years.
“Living Carbon’s synthetic biology platform has the potential to bridge the gap between supply and demand by leveraging a powerful combination of proven nature-based solutions as carbon sinks and genetic engineering. We will bring quality credit to the market,” said Coca. recent remarks.
Connection with the Mona Lisa
The poplar tree is one of the fastest growing trees in the world and has a long and interesting history.
Greek and Roman soldiers made shields out of wood. In the United States, where poplars are sometimes called cottonwoods or aspens, poplars 50 to 160 feet tall are common in gardens. Slender cone-shaped trees are also increasingly used for building houses in the form of plywood.
Leonardo da Vinci chose poplar wood panels to paint the Mona Lisa nearly 500 years ago.
At Oregon State University, Strauss spent much of his career improving poplars. He first tackled bad breath in wood. It releases a chemical called isoprene that, when mixed with exhaust pipe pollution, could increase the already powerful global warming potential of methane.
Then he tamed Poplar’s active sex life. A normal poplar forest, along with clusters of trees producing a wide variety of female flowers and male pollen, could produce enough saplings to overwhelm genetically engineered newcomer saplings.
After years of surveying nine acres of poplar forests in Oregon, Strauss and his colleagues discovered a way to give the modified trees “containment properties” and preserve the characteristics of genetically modified trees. bottom.
Now Strauss is part of Poplar’s greatest experiment. Strauss emphasized that he has no investments or shares in the company. His concern, he said, is “to push forward what works.”
A team from Living Carbon recently joined Strauss students in planting the seeds of what the company calls a “super tree.” The team “threw a party to have them dogeza,” Strauss said.
Living Carbon CEO Hall has high hopes for the project.
“Today the Earth no longer has the ability to sequester carbon. We have distorted the metabolism of the biosphere,” she wrote in a blog post.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environmental professionals.
