Modeling carbon leakage impacts of the EU climate policies with a global forest sector model (original) (raw)
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Forest Policy and Economics, 2018
In order to meet the requirements of the Paris climate agreement, the EU plans to set new goals for forest carbon sinks. This may affect the future development potential in the wood using sectors in Europe and their contribution in the new circular bio-economy. We explore the potential consequences mainly on the forest sector in the region consisting of EU and Norway (EU + N), but also globally, that would arise if the countries in the EU + N constrained economic utilization of their forest resources. For the analysis, we use the global forest sector model EFI-GTM, which also incorporates the trade in wood and wood products. Due to the globally growing demand for forest products and available forest resources in the rest of the world (RoW) outside of the EU + N, the leakages of harvests, forest industry production and employment opportunities from EU + N to RoW would be considerable. Decreased wood harvests and forest industry production in the EU + N would raise the wood and forest industry product prices globally, and increase production and employment in the forest sector in RoW. Due to the harvest leakage, climate mitigation benefits of the policy in the form of forest carbon sinks in the EU + N would be considerably reduced. Also, there would be inter-sectoral carbon leakage, as part of the wood consumption would shift to more energy-demanding competing materials.
A comprehensive assessment of European forest-based biomass harvest potentials , their future utilization and implications on international wood product markets and forest carbon dynamics requires the capability to model forest resource development as well as global markets for wood-based commodities with sufficient geographical and product detail and, most importantly, their interactions. To this aim, we apply a model framework fully integrating a Euro-pean forest resource model and a global economic forest sector model. In a business-as-usual (BaU) scenario, European Union harvests increase seven percent by 2030 compared to past levels (485 million m 3 on 2000-2012 average and 517 million m 3 in 2030). The subsequent annual carbon stock change is a ten percent reduction by 2030 compared to 2000-2012 average (equal to 119.3 Tg C yr-1), corresponding to decreasing carbon-dioxide removal by the European forests. A second, high mobilization scenario (HM), characterized by the full utilization of the potential wood supply and a doubling of EU wood pellets consumption, was designed to explore potential impacts on forest carbon dynamics and international wood product markets under intensive exploitation of biomass resources. In the HM scenario, harvest increases by 55% (754 million m 3 in 2030) compared to the BaU scenario. Fuelwood accounts for this increase in harvest levels as overall competition effects from increased wood pellets consumption outweighs synergies for material uses of wood, resulting in slightly reduced harvests of industrial roundwood. As expected, this increasing harvest level would significantly impair carbon-dioxide forest sequestration from the atmosphere in the medium term (-83% in 2030, compared to 2000-2012 average).
EU mitigation potential of harvested wood products
Carbon Balance and Management, 2015
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 CO 2 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 CO 2 yr −1 in 2030. The increasing and decreasing harvest scenarios produced a HWP sink of −43.2 and −9.0 Mt CO 2 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).
Boosting the EU forest-based bioeconomy: Market, climate, and employment impacts
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2021
This study adds to the scientific literature dealing with the climate change mitigation implications of wood substitution. Its main scientific contribution rests with the modelling approach. By fully integrating forest resource and wood-product markets modelling in quantitative scenario analysis, we account for international trade in wood products as well as impacts on EU forests and forest-based sector employment of an increased EU uptake of wood-based construction and/or biochemicals and biofuels. Our results confirm the crucial role of the sawmilling industry in the forest-based bioeconomy. Thus, boosting wood-based construction in the EU would be most effective in increasing EU production and employment-in logging and solid wood-products manufacturing, but also in sectors using sawmilling byproducts as feedstock. Vertical integration in woodbased biorefineries should thus be advantageous. The positive EU climate-change mitigation effects of increased carbon storage in harvested wood products (HWP) and material substitution from increased wood construction are more than offset by reduced net forests carbon sinks by 2030, due to increased EU harvests. Further, increased EU imports, resulting in lower consumption of sawnwood outside the EU, would reduce extra-EU long-life HWP carbon storage and substitution of GHG-intensive materials, highlighting the need for concerted international climate change mitigation.
Biogeosciences Discussions, 2016
The comprehensive analysis of carbon stocks and fluxes of managed European forests is a prerequisite to quantify their role in biomass production and climate change mitigation. We applied the Carbon Budget Model (CBM) to 26 European (EU) countries, parameterized with country information on the historical forest age structure, management practices, harvest regimes and the main natural disturbances. We quantified C stocks for the five forest pools plus Harvested Wood Products (HWP), and the fluxes among these pools, from 2000 to 2030. The aim is to quantify the main C fluxes as affected by land-use changes, natural disturbances and forest management and to asses the impact of specific harvest and afforestation scenarios after 2012 on the mitigation potential of the EU forest sector. Substitution effects and the possible impacts of climate are not included in this analysis. Results show that for the historical period (2000–2012) the net primary productivity (NPP) of the forest po...
Price of CO2 emissions and use of wood in Europe
Forest Policy and Economics, 2012
In this study, we examine the effects of the price for fossil fuel CO 2 emissions on the use of wood in Europe. In particular, we assess the economic potential to substitute wood for coal in large scale heat and power production. We also review the impacts of increased energy wood usage on the forest industry and roundwood prices. The analysis is conducted with the European Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization Model. We consider three scenarios, where carbon price remains at 20 €/tCO 2 , increases to 50 €/tCO 2, or increases to 110 euro/tCO 2 by 2040. It seems that a carbon price higher than 20 €/tCO 2 is required to increase wood based energy production. At prices below 50 €/tCO 2 , energy wood consists mainly of forest chips, recycled wood, bark, and black liquor. At the carbon price of 50 €/tCO 2 , the use of wood for energy begins to compete with the use of wood in the forest industry. At the price of 110 €/tCO 2 , roughly one third of wood used in large scale heat and power production would also be suitable for material use. Even then, the contribution of wood based energy in reaching the EU RES target is modest, since the availability of wood limits its increased use in energy production.
Modeling Carbon Leakages with Forestation Policies
2011
This paper analyzes carbon leakage due to reduced emissions from deforestation (RED). We find that leakage with RED is good because the policy induces afforestation that contributes to a further carbon sequestration. By ignoring the domestic component of carbon leakage, the literature can either overestimate or underestimate leakage, depending on the magnitudes of the numerator and the denominator of the leakage formulas. Unlike the literature, we include the land and agricultural markets in the analysis of carbon leakage with forestation policies. In this model, carbon leakage depends on: (1) supply and demand elasticities of timber production and consumption, respectively in the country introducing a RED policy (Home country) and in the rest of the world; (2) Home country"s production and consumption share in the world timber production and consumption, respectively; (3) prices of land and crop products in the Home country and the rest of the world; (4) initial allocation of land between forestry and agriculture; (5) share of total forest area set aside under RED; and (6) relative carbon sequestration potential of the forest planted on an afforested land and of the forest withdrawn from timber harvest. These potentials depend heavily on the forest species as well as on timing of the policy, and on the discount rate and time path of increasing carbon prices. JEL: Q23, Q24, Q54
Carbon Management, 2016
Anthropogenic GHG emissions add a fast reinforcing feedback cycle to global carbon dynamics which continues to influence GHG concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere. When looking at forest carbon cycles there is potential in utilizing another feedback cycle, namely the carbon cycle involving harvested wood products. To assess the potential of the mitigation options arising from these carbon flows, the forest-based sector in Austria was modelled to assess causal links, dependencies and dynamics involved in GHG-relevant processes. Carbon dynamics were investigated in forests and forest soil carbon, the forest product chain and life-cycle analyses for substitution of conventional products with wood products in a cascade of different modelling approaches and paradigms, and the results synthesized. It was found that material use of products from domestic timber sources has the highest climate change mitigation efficiency when originating from sustainably managed forests regarding biomass stocks. The emissions saved through building up a carbon stock from harvested wood products and through emissions substitution can be as high as »20 years of total annual Austrian emissions in 90 years. Additional conservation measures while sustaining sawnwood production and the related GHG benefits at a high level had the highest contribution to an overall carbon sink.