Fact check: Compensating for breath of Utrecht residents with trees is not ‘impossible’

“Just to neutralize 400,000 breathing Utrecht residents by 2027, 7.3 million mature trees must be planned,” Stadsbelang Utrecht wrote in its program. ANP, Pointer and Nieuwscheckers test these kinds of statements and assertions in the run-up to the municipal elections for factual correctness. When asked, party leader Cees Bos said how the party arrived at this calculation. The fact-checkers were not convinced.

A person emits about 1 kilogram of CO2 per day, the party bases itself on an article by Climate Helpdesk, written by scientist Herman Russchenberg. That would mean that 400,000 people emit 146 million kilograms of CO2 per year. The party further states on the basis of information from Dutch Renewergy that an average tree absorbs about 20 kilograms of CO2 emissions in a year. For Utrecht’s emissions, 7.3 million trees are then needed, Bos calculates.

But the same article by Climate Helpdesk also states the following: “Before our breath adds CO2 to the atmosphere, it is first removed. It is a closed system and part of the natural carbon cycle.” CO2 is created by burning food. Vegetables (and therefore also meat, because animals eat grass and grains) contain carbon, which we exhale in combination with oxygen as CO2. Plants first absorb the carbon dioxide from the air and release it later. It concerns the same amount, so there is no question of additional CO2 emissions.

Russchenberg, director of the Climate Institute of TU Delft and author of the article in question, tells the ANP that this claim by Stadsbelang Utrecht is flawed. “The exhalation of CO2 by people is not the problem at all,” he says. “Breathing does not contribute to global warming, so there is no need to compensate at all.”

According to Russchenberg, the problem lies with fossil fuels. Carbon has often been stored in the ground for millions of years. The moment you burn that, you do add CO2 to the carbon system. “So you should compensate for the 400,000 Utrecht residents who drive a car, that makes sense,” says the scientist, who often hears these kinds of claims like those of Stadsbelang Utrecht. “It’s sometimes used to downplay the effect of fossil fuels on the climate,” he says.

In a response to this fact check, party leader Bos acknowledges that the statement in the election program is indeed incorrect. In the text he had indeed discussed the closed system, “also in relation to biomass”, he says. Energy can be generated by burning, fermenting or gassing biomass such as wood, manure or food waste. “I hadn’t seen it, but there seems to be a piece of text missing from our program, both on the website and in the PDF text”, Bos explains the error. The party promises to “fix” it as soon as possible.

The claim of Stadsbelang Utrecht is therefore incorrect. The breathing residents of Utrecht do not have to be compensated at all by planting trees: CO2 emissions through the breath do not contribute to global warming. The carbon dioxide that ends up in the air in this way has been removed at an earlier moment and therefore does not add anything extra.