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