Delaying the decomposition of woody biomass is one of the crucial ways of reaching Yale Carbon Containment Lab’s most immediate goal: containing 30 million MTCO2e by 2030. An exciting new idea to increase that delay has sparked the imagination of the lab members since its founding. This summer, with the rigorous work of 5 graduate students and Professor Jana VanderGoot, this initial idea has transformed into a full-scale pilot study: The Carbon Vaults Project.
Wood preservation has long been a tradition in architecture. Architects have been thinking of ways to raise the wood off the ground to prevent its decay for decades. In the CC Lab, specifically, using carbon vaults for carbon storage was first imagined in 2021. Our call-to-action was clear: The United States Forest Service (USFS) is approved to thin 70 million acres of overstocked forests as wildfire treatment by 2032, which produce slash piles. These piles may decay or catch on fire, releasing a lot of carbon.
Therefore, covering and protecting these slash piles is a great strategy both for fire mitigation and carbon storage, especially across the American West which faces severe wildfire risk.
Learn more on the Yale Carbon Containment Lab's website.