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A global strategy for forest utilization: mitigating climate change without unduly constraining utilization

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Abstract

The objective of the study was to outline a global scheme for furthering mitigation of climate change in the Managed Forest subsector of the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry sector. The core of the study is an analysis of the emissions associated with the start-up of steady-state utilization of previously unutilized forest areas. Example forest growth curves are employed to demonstrate the dependence of the start-up emissions on the forest characteristics. In the case of fiber production, the start-up leads to an effective step-like increase in cumulative carbon dioxide (CO2) emission. In the case of biofuel production, a significant level of CO2 removal is attainable in the longer term, but, because of the start-up emission, there is usually an initial period of effective CO2 emission. The duration of this initial period has a strong dependence on the growth rate of the forest and the type of fossil fuel replaced. The results of the analysis were exploited in the compilation of a proposal for a global scheme aimed at mitigating climate change without unduly constraining forest utilization. In the scheme, increased forest utilization for the production of solid-wood products and fiber products would be penalized on the basis of the consumption of such products, while, in certain cases, increased forest utilization for biofuel production would be rewarded. Acceptable biofuel options were identified in the study. An example is the replacement of coal by wood chips originating from forest which has a growth rate at least as great as that of a typical boreal forest.

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Appendix

Appendix

1.1 Carbon substitution factors employed in the analysis

The applied fuel characteristics are given in Table 4.

Table 4 Composition data and heating values of the fuels

Table 5 gives the corresponding combustion emissions per MJ of fuel chemical energy. The chemical energy in question is that based on the lower heating value (LHV) of the as-fired fuel. The emissions applied for the various procurement chains have been derived from data given in the following report: Liski et al. (2011) Forest bioenergy: greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts in Finland, (in Finnish). Report 5/2011, Finnish Environment Institute. In the case of forest biomass, the data of Liski et al. applied herein are those for trees cut in the first round of thinning operations. These data include the emissions due to felling and trimming, which, according to a paper by Eriksson et al. in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 37 (2007):671–681, are even greater, per ton of wood, than those incurred during the final felling of the stand. The procurement chain emissions employed herein, corresponding in each case to 1 MJ of fuel chemical energy, are also presented in Table 5.

Table 5 CO2 emissions of combustion processes and procurement chains; chipping included in procurement chain of forest biomass

The modified carbon substitution factors, denoted by f′, for a number of biofuel alternatives have been calculated on the basis of the data in Table 5 using the defining formula, Eq. 1, in the main text. These values of f′ are presented in Table 6. Also included is the carbon substitution factor applied for the case in which hydrocarbons are produced from wood and then used to replace petroleum-oil based motor fuels. This factor was estimated from information available in the following report: McKeough and Kurkela (2008) Process evaluations and design studies in the UCG project 2004–2007. VTT Research Notes 2434. The factor can be considered as a best-case value when the conversion plant is self-sufficient in electricity.

Table 6 Carbon substitution factors, for certain biofuel options

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McKeough, P. A global strategy for forest utilization: mitigating climate change without unduly constraining utilization. Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change 24, 1363–1399 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-019-09851-y

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