Could a Wood-Based “Blanket” Stop Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Thawing Permafrost?

A Canadian startup is developing an insulating “blanket” made from wood-based material to stabilize thawing permafrost and prevent greenhouse gases from escaping into the atmosphere. If successful, the approach could become the first tool designed to directly reduce emissions from permafrost as the Arctic warms.

“Our goal is to ensure that carbon in the soil remains buried,” says Cansu Culha, co-founder of PermaC and a natural-hazards researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Why thawing permafrost matters

The Earth’s frozen regions are thawing as temperatures rise in response to human emissions. The only reliable way to slow that melting globally is to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels. But some researchers are also exploring ways to prevent snow and ice from melting directly, including placing reflective mats on glaciers or pumping water into sea ice to make it thicker.

PermaC researchers say their approach is the first, to their knowledge, to focus on preventing permafrost thaw and the associated greenhouse-gas emissions. Those emissions are estimated to be on par with Japan’s.

The company has completed its first test of the insulating blanket in Canada’s Northwest Territories, in an area of rapidly eroding permafrost known as a retrogressive thaw slump. These landslides occur when permafrost hills thaw and collapse, severely damaging the landscape.

The collapse exposes deeper layers of soil to warming, creating hotspots for carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane emissions. Some estimates suggest that carbon emissions from rapidly eroding regions can be as much as 40% higher than projections from models that consider only gradual thaw.

How PermaC’s permafrost blanket works

The company’s method is designed to stabilize the edges of a thaw slump with a layer of wood shavings, soil, native seeds and a burlap-like mat made from coconut shells.

Culha says she developed the idea after learning that Indigenous communities in Alaska had helped prevent permafrost degradation by planting trees along valley edges. Similar erosion-control blankets are used in temperate regions, but they had not previously been used to insulate or stabilize permafrost, she says.

PermaC has not yet announced the results of this year’s test. However, the blanket appears to have stopped the erosion. During the Arctic summer, the edge of the unblanketed depression receded by 5 metres, while the blanketed area showed no measurable retreat, Culha says.

“It’s very promising,” says Christina Schadel, a permafrost scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, who advises the company. But she adds that the result comes from only one thaw slump over a single summer.

How much carbon could the blankets prevent?

One challenge is determining how much CO₂ and methane emissions the blankets could prevent. Measuring emissions from thaw slumps is difficult and remains an active area of research, says Mark Lara, a biologist who studies permafrost landforms at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“There is definitely a slump that is spewing out carbon,” he says. But many factors can affect the result, including the slump’s shape, the amount of carbon stored in the soil and how much of that carbon is released as CO₂ or methane after erosion.

For now, Culha has only rough estimates of the emissions the blankets could prevent. Based on research into Arctic erosion rates and soil carbon, she estimates that treating an average carbon-rich slump could prevent about 2,200 tonnes of CO₂ emissions over one year.

PermaC’s ambitious goal is to install blankets at 20,000 slump sites in Canada and Alaska over the next 10 years. If the estimates are accurate and the blankets can be deployed at that scale, Culha calculates that they could prevent roughly 40 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions—about equivalent to Hungary’s annual emissions.

Permafrost carbon credits

Culha says the company is developing a detailed methodology that independent third parties could use to verify emissions prevention. This verification would be required before PermaC could sell carbon credits for emissions prevented by the blankets. Buyers could use those credits to offset emissions elsewhere.

The company aims to issue credits as early as next year. Culha says PermaC has raised C$1.4 million (US$1 million) from investors so far.