CO2 from Cars Could Be Negative in 12 Months

If European governments used just 25 cents of the tax revenue they take from the sale of petrol, for one year, to plant trees, CO2 from cars could be carbon neutral in 12 months

The Math

The average price of a litre of petrol in Europe is 1.50 Euro.

48 cents of this is tax (excise and VAT)

One litre of petrol emits 2.4kg of CO2

One tree absorbs around 10kg of CO2 per year. And 200kg of CO2 over the first 20 years.

One tree costs around 1 Euro to plant.

If European governments used 25 cents of the tax revenue from the sale of petrol, in one year in every 20, to plant trees, the use of petrol cars could be carbon neutral in 12 months.

And the best bit

Governments only have to do this one year every twenty. A tree will absorb around the same amount of CO2 throughout its first 20 years. The trees governments plant today will cover the CO2 emissions from cars for the next 20 years.

Perhaps it is too much to do it in one year. In which case the cost could be spread over the first twenty years of a tree’s life (when it is sequestering the most amount of CO2).

Which would mean an ongoing cost of just 1.25 cents per litre.

If governments would just invest 1.25 cents from the taxes they take from the sale of petrol to plant trees, the use of cars would be carbon neutral in twenty years.

And to make this happen in 10 years the cost would still be only 2.5 cents per litre sold.

The cost to make CO2 from cars carbon neutral is honestly tiny, there is no reason why governments could not divert as little as 1.25 Euro of their fuel tax revenue to solve the “problem” if the desire were there.

Let us not get into hemp, which has much higher CO2 sequestration abilities than trees has many more uses, encourages more bio diversity and improves production of farmland…..

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