On the occasion of the National Tree Planting Day in the Republic of the Congo, TotalEnergies has launched the “Batéké Carbon Sink” afforestation operations.
This large-scale project, conducted in partnership with Forêt Ressources Management, consists of 40,000 hectares of planted forest on the Batéké Plateaux. Some 40 million trees will be planted in total over 10 years and cared for over 35 years.
During the past eight months, local tree nurseries have already produced more than one million plants, which will be progressively planted from the next rainy season on the 800 hectares of land that have been prepared since last summer, the company said in a statement this morning.
The 40,000 hectares planted will create a carbon sink that will sequester an average of 500,000 tons of CO2 per year over twenty years, equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of an average European city of 70,000 inhabitants. The carbon credits will be certified in accordance with the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS).