Trees cost too much, take too long

It will cost too much to plant large carbon forests, says the CSIRO which has been studying areas of opportunity for carbon forestry, especially in the Murray-Darling Basin. It found the shortage of tree seed and labour would limit plantings. "What you find is if there's a high establishment cost, say $3000 per hectare, and you start to look at commercial interest rates, it's going to take a high carbon price, say over $40 a tonne, to see any real area of opportunity over which carbon forestry will be profitable," says Dr Michael Battaglia.