Bill Gates does not finance deforestation under the pretext of “fighting climate change”

Photo: wirestock, Freepi On August 31, 2023, the web portal Nulta tacka published an article about a project aimed at reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The article is titled:

Bill Gates plans to cut down millions of hectares of forest to “fight climate change”

According to the claims in the article, Gates is “funding a plan to cut down and bury millions of hectares of trees” under the pretext of “saving the planet”, i.e. fighting climate change. Among other things, it is stated:

Using $6.6 million in seed funding from Gates’ Breakthrough Energy and others, Kodama Systems wants to clear 70 million acres of western forests over the next decade, according to reports.

InfoWars reports: After cutting down the (mostly Californian) trees, Kodama plans to bury them, ostensibly to prevent them from “leaking” carbon back into the air.

Project coordinators are choosing to harvest carbon offsets by burying the biomass in dry, oxygen-free “earth vaults” instead of using it for conventional means, such as wood for housing.

The article featuring the same claims was shared on different social networks (1, 2).

Where do these claims come from?

The text published on the web portal Nulta tacka is an almost literal translation of the article published on August 31, 2023, on the American website Infowars. Infowars frequently publishes disinformation and various conspiracy theories. The claims published on this site, as well as the claims of its founder Alex Jones, have been analyzed by various fact-checking platforms on multiple occasions (1, 2, 3, 4). Nulta tacka is also known for publishing such content. In several analyses, Raskrinkavanje assessed the claims they published in their articles, a large number of which were related to climate change (1, 2, 3, 4).

What kind of project is it?

The startup company Kodama Systems from the United States of America is dedicated to “forest restoration for future generations”, according to its official website. The project that this startup is developing involves burying cut trees in special geological “vaults”, a kind of underground chamber, to prevent the release of carbon dioxide from the trees back into the atmosphere. The “Frequently Asked Questions” section on the Kodama Systems website explains that many forests in the western US today are overgrown, filled with large numbers of dead trees, and are susceptible to high-intensity fires. Some of the solutions for restoring balance in forests are thinning and controlled fires, according to this startup. In the continuation of the same section, it is explained what the essence of the Kodama Systems project is:

What does Kodama do?

We are creating a comprehensive reforestation service to improve thinning operations and utilize non-marketable biomass. Improving operations involves automating machines, implementing teleoperations and strengthening connectivity to remote locations: faster work and safer workplaces for ground staff. Our method of using non-marketable biomass consists of storing high-carbon woody residues from thinning operations in a way that minimizes decomposition with low investment. These residues would otherwise be burned in a pile, which is both expensive and a source of CO2 emissions.

What does a carbon storage pilot mean?

Kodama is developing a methodology for the extraction of carbon, woody residues from thinning operations and storage in geological vaults designed to minimize decomposition and remain sustainable over the long term. This model leverages private investment to serve as a cost-effective, climate-positive alternative to [tree] burning. For more details on the technology and scope of the project, see our project application for Frontier.

So, the essence of this project is to improve the climate sustainability of forest thinning projects by, instead of burning, which leads to the re-emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, by burying trees that cannot be sold in a kind of chambers, which will prevent such emission. The purpose of these chambers (vaults) is to reduce the possibility of the action of water, oxygen and microbial activity on the buried biomass, in order to reduce or prevent its decomposition. The project, as it is emphasized on the website of the startup, implies the use of biomass that is not for sale, that is, trees that cannot be used in any other way and that, in order to be removed, are burned in the forests. Therefore, the statement from the mentioned article that “project coordinators choose” to make a profit from this way of disposing of wood instead of “using it for conventional means, such as wood for housing” is not correct.

How is this project financed?

Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy organization and others have invested 6.6 million US dollars in this project, according to Forbes. In addition, Kodama Systems secured $1.1 million in grants from the California Wildfire Agency and other sources for this project. Part of the financing is provided by large companies that buy “carbon credits”. “A carbon credit could be defined as a license for the emission of greenhouse gases, i.e. carbon dioxide. Namely, when a company buys a carbon credit from the government, it gets a license to emit a ton of CO2”, explains Raskrinkavanje’s analysis which you can read here. So, Bill Gates’ organization is only one of the investors in Kodama Systems and its funds represent only a share in the total finances of this startup. Therefore, the claim that Gates “plans to cut down millions of hectares of forests” in order to “fight climate change” from the title of the aforementioned article on the web portal Nulta tacka is manipulative. It is still not possible to say with complete certainty whether this solution will be as effective as expected. There are data that indicate that this way of disposing of dead trees, as well as those that cannot be sold, which were cut down in efforts to thin forests, can contribute to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This could also contribute to the reduction of global warming. However, it is still a pilot project and Kodama Systems is working on testing and perfecting this tree disposal technique. For now, it is not known whether and when exactly this project will include larger amounts of trees. So, it is neither true that Bill Gates “plans” to cut down the forest, nor does this project imply cutting down trees only for the purpose of burying them. These are trees that should definitely be cut down, and only those that cannot be used for other purposes should be buried. Given all the above, we assess the claim that Bill Gates is financing forest cutting under the guise of fighting climate change as disinformation and a conspiracy theory. We give the same rating to the claim that the project coordinators choose to profit from burying the wood instead of putting it to conventional use. Author: Marija Ćosić, Raskrinkavanje.ba