🌳 Forests, carbon & scale: AI, China, and Microsoft’s bet

Jens Isbak

Welcome to this week's newsletter 👋🏻

This week’s newsletter takes us around the world: from forests turning from carbon sinks to sources in the EU, to China’s massive tree planting efforts, and a new AI system in Lithuania that listens to forests in real time.

We’re also highlighting a groundbreaking carbon removal agreement from Microsoft, and share reflections on what scale and strategy in forestry might look like when tech meets trees.

💬 In this week’s issue we’ll cover:

Foresting Tomorrow #26: Global forests, big shifts and satellite-scale thinking 🌍
Feature story: What China’s afforestation model can teach the rest of us 🌱
Success story: Microsoft to remove carbon from pulp and paper mills 💨
Product update: Trace your registration 🛰️
Further reading: Sources and insights 🤓

Let’s dive in! 👇
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🎙️ Podcast episode 26: Global forests, big shifts and satellite-scale thinking

This week’s episode covers a lot of ground—literally.

We start with a major milestone: for the first time ever, the United States generated more electricity from clean sources than fossil fuels in a single month. We then explore Europe’s changing forest carbon dynamics, including the LULUCF regulation and its implications for forest owners.

From there, we head east to examine China’s colossal tree-planting programme—planting over 4 million hectares last year alone—and wrap up in Lithuania, where researchers are using AI and sound to monitor forest health in real time.

🌳 Listen to the latest episode of Foresting Tomorrow here 🌳
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🌱 Feature story: What China’s afforestation model can teach the rest of us

Forest coverage in China has doubled since the 1980s, reaching over 25% of total land area. In 2024 alone, the country planted 4.45 million hectares of trees and restored 3.22 million hectares of grassland.

In this week’s article, we look at:

Why China sees forests as part of its “green GDP”
The world’s largest afforestation programme – covering 42% of China’s landmass by 2050
The balance between rapid planting and long-term ecological quality
What lessons other countries might draw – without copying the model

📄 Read the full article here
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💨 Success story: Microsoft to remove carbon from pulp and paper mills

Microsoft is scaling carbon removal in a big way—by tapping into the pulp and paper industry.

In a historic agreement with climate-tech start-up CO280, Microsoft will remove over 3.6 million tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere by 2037. The solution? Capturing biogenic CO₂ directly from recovery boilers in paper mills and storing it permanently underground.

Key takeaways:

400,000 tonnes of CO₂ to be removed annually by 2029
Private financing for a dozen retrofit projects across the US
Jobs and investment in timberland communities
CO₂ is captured from emissions that originate in wood—making the process part of a closed, biogenic loop

As Microsoft’s Brian Marrs puts it:

“Adding carbon removal to existing paper mills is an efficient way to scale—and support timberland economies in the process.”

📘 Learn more about Microsoft’s carbon removal strategy here
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🛰️ Product update: Trace your registration

We’ve improved the GPS trace function in Forsler to make it more stable, precise, and efficient—whether you’re mapping a point, a track, or an area.

Just hit the GPS button and start drawing the geometry that fits your task. Want even better accuracy? You can now connect an external GPS device to your mobile for high-precision mapping in the field.