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EU mitigation potential of harvested wood products.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:The new rules for the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry sector under the Kyoto Protocol recognized the importance of Harvested Wood Products (HWP) in climate change mitigation. We used the Tier 2 method proposed in the 2013 IPCC KP Supplement to estimate emissions and removals from HWP from 1990 to 2030 in EU-28 countries with three future harvest scenarios (constant historical average, and +/-20% in 2030). RESULTS:For the historical period (2000-2012) our results are consistent with other studies, indicating a HWP sink equal on average to -44.0 Mt CO2 yr-1 (about 10% of the sink by forest pools). Assuming a constant historical harvest scenario and future distribution of the total harvest among each commodity, the HWP sink decreases to -22.9 Mt CO2 yr-1 in 2030. The increasing and decreasing harvest scenarios produced a HWP sink of -43.2 and -9.0 Mt CO2 yr-1 in 2030, respectively. Other factors may play an important role on HWP sink, including: (i) the relative share of different wood products, and (ii) the combined effect of production, import and export on the domestic production of each commodity. CONCLUSIONS:Maintaining a constant historical harvest, the HWP sink will slowly tend to saturate, i.e. to approach zero in the long term. The current HWP sink will be maintained only by further increasing the current harvest; however, this will tend to reduce the current sink in forest biomass, at least in the short term. Overall, our results suggest that: (i) there is limited potential for additional HWP sink in the EU; (ii) the HWP mitigation potential should be analyzed in conjunction with other mitigation components (e.g. sink in forest biomass, energy and material substitution by wood).

SUBMITTER: Pilli R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4595521 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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EU mitigation potential of harvested wood products.

Pilli Roberto R Fiorese Giulia G Grassi Giacomo G

Carbon balance and management 20150225 1

<h4>Background</h4>The new rules for the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry sector under the Kyoto Protocol recognized the importance of Harvested Wood Products (HWP) in climate change mitigation. We used the Tier 2 method proposed in the 2013 IPCC KP Supplement to estimate emissions and removals from HWP from 1990 to 2030 in EU-28 countries with three future harvest scenarios (constant historical average, and +/-20% in 2030).<h4>Results</h4>For the historical period (2000-2012) our results ...[more]

PMID: 26457115

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Reducing net greenhouse gas emissions through conserving existing forest carbon stocks and encouraging additional uptake of carbon in existing and new forests have become important climate change mitigation tools. The contribution of harvested wood products (HWPs) to increasing carbon uptake has been recognised and approaches to quantifying this pool developed. In New Zealand, harvesting has more than doubled since 1990 while log exports have increased by a factor of 11 due to past afforestation and comparatively little expansion in domestic processing. This paper documents New Zealand's application of the IPCC approaches for reporting contributions of the HWP pool to net emissions, in order to meet international greenhouse gas inventory reporting requirements. We examine the implications of the different approaches and assumptions used in calculating the HWP contribution and highlight model limitations. RESULTS:Choice of system boundary has a large impact for a country with a small domestic market and significant HWP exports. Under the Production approach used for New Zealand's greenhouse gas inventory reporting, stock changes in planted forests and in HWPs both rank highly as key categories. The contribution from HWPs is even greater under the Atmospheric Flow approach, because emissions from exported HWPs are not included. Conversely the Stock Change approach minimises the contribution of HWPs because the domestic market is small. The use of country-specific data to backfill the time series from 1900 to 1960 has little impact but using country-specific parameters in place of IPCC defaults results in a smaller HWP sink for New Zealand. This is because of the dominance of plantation forestry based on a softwood mainly used in relatively short-lived products. CONCLUSIONS:The NZ HWP Model currently meets international inventory reporting requirements. Further disaggregation of the semi-finished HWP end uses both within New Zealand and in export markets is required to improve accuracy. Product end-uses and lifespans need to be continually assessed to capture changes. More extensive analyses that include the benefits of avoided emissions through product substitution and life cycle emissions from the forestry sector are required to fully assess the contribution of forests and forest products to climate change mitigation and a low emissions future.

Project description:Climate change mitigation benefits from the land sector are not being fully realised because of uncertainty and controversy about the role of native forest management. The dominant policy view, as stated in the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, is that sustainable forest harvesting yielding wood products, generates the largest mitigation benefit. We demonstrate that changing native forest management from commercial harvesting to conservation can make an important contribution to mitigation. Conservation of native forests results in an immediate and substantial reduction in net emissions relative to a reference case of commercial harvesting. We calibrated models to simulate scenarios of native forest management for two Australian case studies: mixed-eucalypt in New South Wales and Mountain Ash in Victoria. Carbon stocks in the harvested forest included forest biomass, wood and paper products, waste in landfill, and bioenergy that substituted for fossil fuel energy. The conservation forest included forest biomass, and subtracted stocks for the foregone products that were substituted by non-wood products or plantation products. Total carbon stocks were lower in harvested forest than in conservation forest in both case studies over the 100-year simulation period. We tested a range of potential parameter values reported in the literature: none could increase the combined carbon stock in products, slash, landfill and substitution sufficiently to exceed the increase in carbon stock due to changing management of native forest to conservation. The key parameters determining carbon stock change under different forest management scenarios are those affecting accumulation of carbon in forest biomass, rather than parameters affecting transfers among wood products. This analysis helps prioritise mitigation activities to focus on maximising forest biomass. International forest-related policies, including negotiations under the UNFCCC, have failed to recognize fully the mitigation value of native forest conservation. Our analyses provide evidence for decision-making about the circumstances under which forest management provides mitigation benefits.

Project description:BackgroundBritish Columbia's (BC) extensive forest resources provide climate change mitigation opportunities that are available to few other jurisdictions. However, as a consequence of the Mountain Pine Beetle outbreak and large-scale wildfires, BC is anticipating reduced roundwood harvest for the next decades. Progress towards more climatically efficient utilization of forest resources is needed. This research quantitatively compared the greenhouse gas emission consequences of nine harvested wood products trade and consumption strategies. Inward-focused strategies use wood products within Canada to achieve emission reduction objectives, while outward-focused strategies encourage exports of wood products.ResultsIn the business-as-usual baseline scenario, average emissions arising from BC-originated harvested wood products between 2016 and 2050 were 40 MtCO2e yr-1. The estimated theoretical boundaries were 11 MtCO2e yr-1 and 54 MtCO2e yr-1, under the scenarios of using all harvests for either construction purposes or biofuel production, respectively. Due to the constrained domestic market size, inward-focused scenarios that were based on population and market capacity achieved 0.3-10% emission reductions compared to the baseline. The international markets were larger, however the emissions varied substantially between 68% reduction and 25% increase depending on wood products' end uses.ConclusionsFuture bioeconomy strategies can have a substantial impact on emissions. This analysis revealed that from a carbon storage and emission perspective, it was better to consume BC's harvests within Canada and only export those products that would be used for long-lived construction applications, provided that construction market access beyond the US was available. However, restricting export of wood products destined for short-lived uses such as pulp and wood pellets would have significant economic and social impacts. On the other hand, inward-focused strategies had a small but politically and environmentally meaningful contribution to BC's climate action plan. This study also revealed the conflicts between a demand-driven bioeconomy and targeted environmental outcomes. A hierarchical incentive system that could co-exist with other market drivers may help achieve emission reduction goals, but this would require a better quantitative understanding of wood products' substitution effects. While the analyses were conducted for BC, other regions that are net exporters of wood products may face similar issues.

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EU mitigation potential of harvested wood products.

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EU mitigation potential of harvested wood products.

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