As federal policymakers craft a plan to grow the U.S. economy and address the climate crisis by rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, the United States Congress has a unique opportunity to invest in some of the most important natural infrastructure there is: trees.
Restoring trees to the landscape is the largest, near-term opportunity to remove carbon dioxide from the air at the scale needed to help meet the country’s ambitious climate goals. WRI’s research has found that at its upper-bound potential, tree restoration in the U.S. — which includes reforestation, restocking degraded forests, and agroforestry — could remove up to 540 million tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year through 2050. The average cost of carbon removal through tree restoration is less than $10 per ton of CO