{"id":15127,"date":"2025-12-14T07:18:35","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T12:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/?p=15127"},"modified":"2026-07-01T13:13:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T17:13:56","slug":"tried-40-years-finally-succeeded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/tried-40-years-finally-succeeded\/15127\/","title":{"rendered":"China absorbed 400 million tons of CO\u2082 per year after 40 years of afforestation and now converts captured carbon into food and oxygen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past 40 years,<\/a> China’s large-scale afforestation and ecological engineering efforts have sequestered an average of nearly 400 million tons of CO\u2082 per year<\/strong> through carbon sinks, according to a report based on satellite remote sensing technology. The figure reflects a sustained national effort combining afforestation techniques, ecological engineering, and emerging biotechnologies across four decades.<\/p>\n

The 40-year strategy is yielding lucrative results<\/h2>\n

China has made massive strides in the journey towards carbon recovery. Part of the journey included national forest programs, desertification control, watershed restoration, and urban greening, which enabled the country to build the world’s greatest artificial carbon sinks.<\/p>\n

The 400 million tons of CO\u2082 annually signifies the average amount of CO\u2082 that has been absorbed by China’s expanding forests and engineered ecosystems over the past 40 years. Far from symbolic, this “atmospheric harvest” represents a significant contribution at a time when climate pressure continued to accelerate.<\/p>\n

The fact that China remained headstrong in its removal capacity set the foundation for an era where the captured carbon was seen as merely a climate burden. Thereafter, Chinese scientists decided to look at the captured carbon as more of a resource, paving the way for an entirely new technological frontier.<\/p>\n

Moving from wasted captured CO\u2082 to food<\/h2>\n

As per current research by the Xi’an Jiaotong University and the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, carbon can be reused. With a dual-reactor system, one anaerobic, one aerobic, scientists were able to demonstrate an efficient way of transforming CO\u2082 and electricity into high-quality single-cell protein (SCP)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The first reactor works to convert CO\u2082 into acetate through microbial electrosynthesis. The second reactor relies on aerobic bacteria, specifically from the Alcaligenes<\/em> genus, to transform this acetate into protein-rich biomass.
The results have shown:<\/p>\n