Biomass Energy, Forests and Climate Library

Net carbon accounting and reporting are a barrier to understanding the mitigation value of forest protection in developed countries

Meeting the Paris Agreement global warming target requires deep and rapid cuts in CO2 emissions as well as removals from the atmosphere into land sinks, especially forests. While international climate policy in the land sector does now recognize forest protection as a mitigation strategy, it is not receiving sufficient attention in developed countries even though they experience emissions from deforestation as well as from logging of managed forests.

The carbon costs of global wood harvests

After agriculture, wood harvest is the human activity that has most reduced the storage of carbon in vegetation and soils. Although felled wood releases carbon to the atmosphere in various steps, the fact that growing trees absorb carbon has led to different carbon-accounting approaches for wood use, producing widely varying estimates of carbon costs. Many approaches give the impression of low, zero or even negative greenhouse gas emissions from wood harvests because, in different ways, they offset carbon losses from new harvests with carbon sequestration from growth of broad forest areas. Attributing this sequestration to new harvests is inappropriate because this other forest growth would occur regardless of new harvests and typically results from agricultural abandonment, recovery from previous harvests and climate change itself.

Expert review of the science underlying nature-based climate solutions

Nature-based climate solutions (NbCS) are conservation, restoration and improved management strategies (pathways) in natural and working ecosystems with the primary motivation to mitigate GHG emissions and remove CO2 from the atmosphere1 (similar to ecosystem-based mitigation2).

Viable nature-based climate solutions (NbCS) are needed to achieve climate goals expressed in international agreements like the Paris Accord. Many NbCS pathways have strong scientific foundations and can deliver meaningful climate benefits but effective mitigation is undermined by pathways with less scientific certainty. Here we couple an extensive literature review with an expert elicitation on 43 pathways and find that at present the most used pathways, such as tropical forest conservation, have a solid scientific basis for mitigation. However, the experts suggested that some pathways, many with carbon credit eligibility and market activity, remain uncertain in terms of their climate mitigation efficacy.

Forests and climate: Loggings, carbon sinks and compensation benefits of using wood

As well as reducing fossil fuel use, forests are key in mitigating climate change since forests remove
significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Forests also provide raw materials for
products and fuel for energy production, which decrease fossil emissions to the atmosphere when
substituting more fossil emissions-intensive alternatives. Carbon stored in wood-based products is also
an additional benefit of this. However, we know that harvesting, at least in the short term, reduces the
carbon sink of a forest. If forestry is looked at from the perspective of climate change mitigation, there
are some relevant questions which require attention.

European Union’s Last Intact Forest Landscapes are at A Value Chain Crossroad between Multiple Use and Intensified Wood Production

The European Union’s last large intact forest landscapes along the Scandinavian Mountain range in Sweden offer unique opportunities for conservation of biodiversity, ecological integrity and resilience. However, these forests are at a crossroad between intensified wood production aimed at bio-economy, and rural development based on multi-functional forest landscapes for future-oriented forest value chains.

Effects of forest-fuel harvesting on the diversity of dead wood and epixylic macrolichens in clear-cuts

Forest-fuel harvesting (FFH) is a growing industry in countries of intensive forest management. FFH is the collection of logging residues for energy production interconnected with thinning and clear-cutting, and it reduces especially the amount of fine woody debris (FWD) and stumps on clear-cuts. With dead wood already being a scarce resource in managed forests, the practice may cause further species loss among dead wood dependent, saproxylic species.

Controversy over sustainable forests in Europe: counter democratic power opposing the energy use of forest biomass

The task of the research is to find out how citizens take part in the political debate and decision-making about the energy use of forest biomass. The purpose is to examine the means of public influence with the help of my chosen case example, which is a protest campaign against the Grangemouth biomass plant in Scotland carried out between 2010 and 2018.

EU bioenergy policy: debunking the myths on forest biomass

Bioenergy has a role to play in tackling climate change. But only if it provides significant and rapid cuts in emissions compared to fossil fuels. And that depends mainly on what you’re burning.

Unfortunately, when it comes to wood, EU rules treat pretty much everything equally, from large tree trunks to sawdust. Even though the climate impacts are radically different. So more and more trees are being burnt for energy - in the name of climate action.

Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap

We have arrived at the painful realisation that the idea of net zero has licensed a recklessly cavalier “burn now, pay later” approach which has seen carbon emissions continue to soar. It has also hastened the destruction of the natural world by increasing deforestation today, and greatly increases the risk of further devastation in the future.

To understand how this has happened, how humanity has gambled its civilisation on no more than promises of future solutions, we must return to the late 1980s, when climate change broke out onto the international stage.