Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the average carbon capture capabilities of a single tree.

The UK’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory annually calculates the storage of carbon in UK forestland. The data used are a function of species, age and the quality of the growing location. Based on these data the Forestry Commission’s Woodland Carbon Code provides a range for the rate of carbon capture over typical woodland rotations of between 0.8 and 6 tonnes carbon per hectare per year. A typical value for British woodland is about 2 tonnes carbon per hectare per year. These results equate to a range of about 0.3 to 10 kilograms of carbon per year for a single tree over its life cycle, with a typical value of about 2 kilograms carbon per tree per year.