How Trees Save Austin, Texas $19 Million Dollars Annually
If someone on the street told you they had a method to save a city 19 million dollars annually — would you believe them? US Forest Service Researcher David Nowak says, “If you can only plant one tree, plant it in a city.” Nowak’s research investigates how green infrastructure impacts cities and the relationship between trees and cold hard cost savings — exploring how trees can remove carbon dioxide, filter air pollution, and even absorb rainwater and noise. Urban trees are becoming more and more important to cities as the exodus of people moving to our inner cities across the United States continues to increase.
As cities attempt to curve their carbon footprint, they should start with analyzing the power of trees. Leveraging GIS and algorithmic modeling Nowak as produced detailed inventories of the urban tree canopies in cities and began calculating their dollar value in savings. Nowak and his team created a platform called i-Tree, which calculates costs savings based on the urban tree canopy in a city. A case study in Austin, Texas, showed that the city saves 19 million dollars annually in reduced building-energy use and 5 million dollars in reduced carbon emission from their tree infrastructure. This tool allows cities to think more strategically about how to spend their limited resources best and use a data-driven approach to decision making.
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