Forest Products Industry

To reduce global carbon emissions, should people harvest and use more wood or less? This question underlies the merits of policies that encourage power plants and heating facilities to burn more wood pellets and builders to construct more tall wood buildings. As one illustration of the question’s importance, the US government has recently requested input on whether a lucrative tax credit for carbon-neutral electricity should apply to burning wood. In the Carbon Costs of Global Wood Harvests, published in Nature in 2023, WRI researchers using a biophysical model estimated that annual wood harvests over the next few decades will emit 3.5-4.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year. That is more than 3 times the world’s current annual average aviation emissions. These wood-harvest emissions occur because the great majority of carbon stored in trees is released to the atmosphere after harvest when roots and slash decompose; as most wood is burned directly for heat or electricity or for energy at sawmills or paper mills; and when discarded paper products, furniture and other wood products decompose or burn. Another recent paper in Nature found that the word’s remaining forests have lost even more carbon, primarily due to harvesting wood, than was lost historically by converting forests to agriculture (other studies have found similar results1). Based on these analyses, a natural climate solution would involve harvesting less wood and letting more forests regrow. This would store more carbon as well as enhance forest biodiversity. Carbon Costs focused on the pure physical emissions from wood harvest and timber management relative to leaving forests alone. This is consistent with the approach used for decades by the IPCC and numerous other papers to estimate the emissions from new wood harvests.2 However, it differs from some papers that claim the carbon emitted to the atmosphere by harvesting and using wood should generally be ignored. These papers assume that wood is carbon neutral, just like solar or wind energy, so long as other forest tracts in a large area (often a whole country) are growing enough to keep the total amount of carbon stored in forests stable — which is true of forests in most countries. By itself, this argument makes little sense: If some parts of a country’s forests are not harvested, forests in that country overall will grow more and absorb more carbon, which reduces global warming. This rationale for carbon neutrality is roughly equivalent to claiming that a money-losing company does not lose money if a country’s companies are profitable overall. Yet, some researchers, such as the developers of the Global Timber Model (GTM), also have a more refined argument for why harvesting wood causes low, no, or even negative emissions. In a blog and a critique submitted to Nature, their core claim is that the effect of forestry on carbon is an economic question that requires analysis using an economic model rather than a biophysical one. According to the GTM, increased wood demand for any one product leads to a range of results that can lower carbon costs; these include causing people to plant more forests, to reduce their consumption of other wood products, and to intensify forest management. The first idea, that increased wood demand leads to more forests, is related to a broader idea: that forests exist because of the demand for wood. This underlies the views of many others who see wood as carbon neutral. The GTM is by far the most cited economic model for analysing the carbon consequences of global wood use, so its findings could have serious policy implications. Importantly, the model has been used to claim the climate advantages of harvesting more wood for bioenergy, particularly to burn in power plants. One GTM paper estimates that substantially increasing demand for wood for bioenergy could lead to roughly 1.1 billion hectares of agricultural land being converted to forests around the world. That is an area almost four times the size of India and equal to more than 70% of current global croplands — which raises the question of where the world’s food would come from. This dialogue, to which WRI has responded in an exchange under review at Nature, provides a useful basis for exploring the effects of wood consumption on climate change and what they mean for policy. The U.S. government has specifically asked for comments about the role of economic models in treating wood as carbon neutral or negative. Here, we take a closer look at both economic and biophysical models and what each does or doesn’t tell us about the climate consequences of using wood. Does Increased Wood Demand Lead to More Forests? Although economic models rely on a different logic, the GTM creators and others sometimes argue that the carbon released by harvesting trees is inherently carbon neutral because it is cancelled out by the carbon that was absorbed when the trees grew.3 This theory could be valid only if all harvested forests existed solely because of the economic incentives created by wood use. If that were true, wood use would be not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative, because the very existence of these forests and the carbon they store could be attributed to the demand created by using wood. Yet, no one seriously suggests that all or even most harvested forests exist only because of wood demand. That would include the rainforests of the Congo Basin, the Amazon Basin, South-East Asia and Alaska, each of which continues to be subject to significant harvests. It would also include the vast, heavily harvested forests of Siberia and Canada where it is too cold for agriculture. In fact, 75% of the world’s forests are owned by governments, which respond to multiple incentives. Even in the United States, a commercially oriented country, only 30% of non-corporate forest owners, who own most private forests, report timber revenue as one of the many reasons they own forests. No one seriously argues that all forests came into being because of wood demand or would disappear without it. […]

The Green Triangle pellet mill will go ahead with Grant District Council approving the request to sell Hutchinson Road. Elected members opted to approve Mount Gambier Biomass – formerly Altus Renewables – request to acquire Hutchinson Road for $28,183. Source: Timberbiz, The Border Watch The $120m renewable energy plant will produce upwards of 300,000 tonnes of industrial specification pellets each year and generate an estimated $64.1m for the local economy. The mill will use FSC/PEFC certified logs and sawmill residues from nearby plantations and sawmills. The plant is proposed for land along Hutchinson Road, adjacent to Mount Gambier Regional Airport with the plant to attract a number of B-double trucks during  day-time and night time. As part of the development, it was identified the intersection between the Riddoch Highway, Airport Road and Hutchinson Road would require realignment to minimise traffic impact. Council previously entered agreements with Altus Renewables to approve the development however, in 2023, the company was placed into administration. Earlier this year, Altus Renewables was purchased by Albioma and council was informed the project would proceed. Mayor Kylie Boston said although the initial project received public backlash, it had since eased off. “I guess there are a few phone calls when we have something in the agenda, but those decisions have to come through council,” Ms Boston said. “Those approvals are done with the state government, and we then see it once it comes through and then it has to be administered.”