Confor welcomes English Carbon Fund

“Confor has lobbied hard for greater productive tree planting, and this additional funding will help to provide the resource that the forestry sector needs for the future”, said chief executive Stuart Goodall.

£19.2 million has been made available by the UK Government to support the creation of new woodlands over 30 hectares, which will help meet future carbon targets. Confor wrote to the minister on 18 October asking for additional funding following the Paris Agreement of December 2015, noting that tree planting is a cost-effective way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and that there was still a strong need to plant more productive woodland.

 “This fund will target the planting of forests over 30ha, the scale needed to make a new forest viable for producing future supplies of wood, as well as delivering the wide range of environmental benefits that modern forests provide”, Stuart Goodall explained.

Announcing the new fund, Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey said:“This new fund will encourage large scale planting, helping us reduce our carbon footprint, while creating new forests to enjoy for generations to come.”

Richard Greenhous, Director of Forestry Services at Forestry Commission England, added: "The Woodland Carbon Fund is designed as a simple, demand led grant scheme to demonstrate how woodland creation can help meet Government's future carbon targets and deliver the wide range of other benefits that woodlands bring.