Canadian Forest Products Contributing to Climate Change Solutions

Forest Products Journal, 2012

The different uses of wood result in a hierarchy of carbon and energy impacts that can be characterized by their efficiency in displacing carbon emissions and/or in displacing fossil energy imports, both being current national objectives. When waste wood is used for biofuels (forest or mill residuals and thinnings) fossil fuels and their emissions are reduced without significant land use changes. Short rotation woody crops can increase yields and management efficiencies by using currently underused land. Wood products and biofuels are coproducts of sustainable forest management, along with the other values forests provide, such as clean air, water, and habitat. Producing multiple coproducts with different uses that result in different values complicates carbon mitigation accounting. It is important to understand how the life-cycle implications of managing our forests and using the wood coming from our forests impacts national energy and carbon emission objectives and other forest values. A series of articles published in this issue of the Forest Products Journal reports on the life-cycle implications of producing ethanol by gasification or fermentation and producing bio-oil by pyrolysis and feedstock collection from forest residuals, thinnings, and short rotation woody crops. These are evaluated and compared with other forest product uses. Background information is provided on existing life-cycle data and methods to evaluate prospective new processes and wood uses. Alternative management, processing, and collection methods are evaluated for their different efficiencies in contributing to national objectives. Sustainably managed forests remove carbon from the atmosphere during their growth cycle, transferring that carbon by harvesting and processing to product carbon stores or fuels that displace fossil fuel-intensive products and fuels. The increasing storage of carbon in products extends the carbon stored in the forest to growing carbon pools outside of the forest, offsetting some fossil fuelintensive product and fuel emissions. The use of wood products and biofuels to substitute for fossil fuel-intensive nonwood products or fossil fuels directly reduces the oneway flow of fossil fuel carbon emissions to the atmosphere.

1) SUMMARY Wood products can significantly extend the greenhouse gas mitigation benefits provided by forests. The greenhouse impact of wood products is measured to a large extent by the energy required in their extraction, manufacture and use and by their disposal strategies. There are significant opportunities to be realised under the proposed Australian National Emissions Trading Scheme to obtain credits for the long-term storage of carbon in forest products. The use of wood biomass to generate energy also represents an opportunity. Further greenhouse benefits can be obtained through the use of forest products instead of more energy and greenhouse-intensive materials. This opportunity can best be realised if life-cycle assessment is adopted in the design of current green building rating schemes.

European Journal of Forest Research, 2009

Wood products are considered to contribute to the mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions. A critical gap in the life cycle of wood products is to transfer the raw timber from the forest to the processing wood industry and, thus, the primary wood products. Therefore, often rough estimates are used for this step to obtain total forestry carbon balances. The objectives of this study were (1) to examine the fate of timber harvested in Thuringian state forests (central Germany), representing a large, intensively managed forested region, and (2) to quantify carbon stocks and the lifetime of primary wood products made from this timber. The analyses were based on the amount and assortments of actually sold timber, and production parameters of the companies that bought and processed this timber. In addition, for coniferous stands of a selected Thuringian forest district, we calculated potential effects of management, as expressed by different thinning regimes on wood products and their lifetimes. Total annual timber sale of soft-and hardwoods from Thuringian state forests (195,000 ha) increased from about 136,893 t C (*0.7 t C ha-1 year-1) in 1996 to 280,194 t C (*1.4 t C ha-1 year-1) in 2005. About 47% of annual total timber harvest went into short-lived wood products with a mean residence time (MRT) \ 25 years. Thirty-one per cent of the total harvest went into wood products with an MRT of 25-43 years, and only 22% was used as construction wood and glued wood, products with the longest MRT (50 years). The average MRT of carbon in harvested wood products was 20 years. Thinning from above throughout the rotation of spruce forests would lead to an average MRT in harvested wood products of about 23 years, thinning from below of about 18 years. A comparison of our calculations with estimates that resulted from the products module of the CO2FIX model (Nabuurs et al. 2001) demonstrates the influence of regional differences in forest management and wood processing industry on the lifetime of harvested wood products. To our knowledge, the present study provides for the first time real carbon inputs of a defined forest management unit to the wood product sector by linking data on raw timber production, timber sales and wood processing. With this new approach and using this data, it should be possible to substantially improve the net-carbon balance of the entire forestry sector.

Environmental Reviews, 2013

Canada’s managed boreal forest, 54% of the nation’s total boreal forest area, stores 28 Pg carbon (C) in biomass, dead organic matter, and soil pools. The net C balance is dominated by the difference of two large continuous fluxes: C uptake (net primary production) and release during decomposition (heterotrophic respiration). Additional releases of C can be high in years, or in areas, that experience large anthropogenic or natural disturbances. From 1990 to 2008, Canada’s managed boreal forest has acted as C sink of 28 Tg C year−1, removing CO2 from the atmosphere to replace the 17 Tg of C annually harvested and store an additional 11 Tg of C year−1 in ecosystem C pools. A large fraction (57%) of the C harvested since 1990 remains stored in wood products and solid waste disposal sites in Canada and abroad, replacing C emitted from the decay or burning of wood harvested prior to 1990 and contributing to net increases in product and landfill C pools. Wood product use has reduced emiss...

Forest Ecology and Management, 2010

Ontario's 70.2 million ha of forests account for 17% of Canada's total and about 2% of the world's forest, covering a land area equivalent in size to the landmasses of Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands combined (OMNR, 2007). Ontario is also an important global HWP producer, providing 14.2% of the total harvested roundwood in Canada between 1951 and 2006 (www.nfdp.ccfm. org/compendium/data/2008_06/tables/com51e.pdf, accessed August 12, 2008). Thus, quantifying Ontario's forests and HWP C stocks and understanding how these vary in time is needed to

2011

Applied Energy, 2009

Forestry for energy should play a significant role in reduction of atmospheric carbon increase, not only by carbon sequestration, but also and mainly by substitution effect, offsetting permanently fossil fuels gaseous emissions and contributing for regional development. In this paper the importance of wood fuel is reviewed for a worldwide perspective, comparing estimated wood demand for energy with other sources of energy and with timber production. The sustainability of wood energy systems is briefly introduced. Following both carbon sequestration and substitution effects of wood energy systems are discussed, as well as expected environmental impacts are presented for some forest productivity scenarios.