New possibilities for land use – how to compensate carbon dioxide emissions with birch.
This spring, the Latvian company “Not Hot Environmental Solutions” planted 32 thousand birches on 16 hectares in Pabērži, Kārķu Parish, Valka Municipality. This young stand will compensate 8.9 tonnes of CO2 over 40 years, while all the trees planted by the company so far – 16 tonnes of CO2. Currently, “Not Hot Environmental Solutions” owns eight birch plantations in different places of Latvia. There are 57.8 thousand trees.
“Not Hot Environmental Solutions” offers companies and individuals to calculate how many tonnes of CO2 each of them produces according to their business, domestic, transport and other habits, and proposes to finance planting of adequate quantities of trees to compensate for these emissions. Trees remain under the management of landowners and will become furniture after 40 years, continuing their life in a new cycle. In this way, everyone has the opportunity to become climate-neutral and even climate-friendly, already compensating for more CO2 than generated.
The company was founded in 2019. The authors of its idea are the businessman Māris Simanovičs and the German businessman with experience in forestry Michael Brockmann. €500 thousand euro has been invested in the development of the company’s mobile app and calculator to combat climate change.
While working on the platform, “Not Hot Environmental Solutions” has collaborated with the Latvian State Forest Research Institute “Silava”, developing an optimal land-planting model and calculating the CO2 capture for birch stands during their life cycle. In order to assess CO2 emissions from operations of a person or company, a calculator has been developed in cooperation with environmental activists and the researcher Jānis Brizgs and adapted separately to companies and individuals.
Information source: Magnetic Latvia – Labs of Latvia