Improving Carbon Stock Estimates for In-Use Harvested Wood Products by Linking Production and Consumption—A Global Case Study

Abstract

We developed a method to better estimate the carbon stocks of in-use harvested wood products (HWP) by using the Eora multiregional input–output tables to link global HWP production and end uses, compared to existing global-scale studies that focused on semifinished HWP. Using the new method, we allocated global HWP to country-specific end uses, including solid HWP used in (1) construction, (2) furniture production, and (3) other end uses, and as (4) household and sanitary paper and (5) other paper and paper products, while the HWP carbon stocks in these end uses were estimated using the Stock Change Approach. We reported that HWP produced globally contained an annual average of 277.7 teragram carbon in 1992–2015, of which 63.0, 12.6, 76.7, 9.1, and 116.3 teragram carbon were consumed by the above five end uses, respectively. By 2015, the carbon stocks of global in-use HWP produced since 1992 accumulated to 2938 teragrams of carbon, of which the above five HWP end uses accounted for 1489, 268, 890, 0, and 291 teragrams of carbon, respectively. Country-specific HWP production and consumption varied significantly, with the eight leading consuming countries (United States, China, Japan, Canada, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, and France) accounting for 69% of the global in-use HWP carbon stocks.

Life’s Energy and Information: Contrasting Evolution of Volume- versus Surface-Specific Rates of Energy Consumption

“…The global power consumption of fossil fuels is known to be equal to W. In columns 6 and 7, energy consumption of plant biomass is considered with energy content J kg and global store of the order of kg [ 46 ] assuming most land ecosystems are disturbed; fires consume 2 GtC yr [ 47 ], which constitutes 4% of primary productivity on land 56 GtC yr [ 48 ] ( W), which amounts to W globally or W m for land on average. Wood consumption due to logging consumes globally about 0.3 GtC yr [ 49 ]; however, in many regions of the world, logging facilitates forest fires [ 47 , 50 , 51 , 52 ]. Instantaneous power for forest fire is estimated as the power of blackbody radiation at 800 K as W m .…”

Required displacement factors for evaluating and comparing climate impacts of intensive and extensive forestry in Germany

“…Despite these shortcomings it has been the most commonly used approach to assess HWP carbon stock in the last decade. Evidently, estimating HWP stocks is challenging and induces uncertainties, because the import and export of wood, as well as inherited emissions from the HWP stock before the modeling period, have to be dealt with (Pukkala 2014;Zhang et al 2020;Yang and Zhang 2016). In contrast to a country specific carbon balance, where HWP carbon stocks are needed to correctly allocate climate impacts, the calculation of RDFs does not require them.…”

Estimating global land system impacts of timber plantations using MAgPIE 4.3.5

“…When reporting LULUCF emissions, the long-term carbon stored in wood products is usually either not reported or not accounted for in models that simulate forest land use (Stehfest et al, 2019;Havlík et al, 2011;Braakhekke et al, 2019;Doelman et al, 2018Doelman et al, , 2020Humpenöder et al, 2018). As management of forests and different uses of harvested wood play a crucial role in the regulation of the concentration of atmospheric CO 2 , it is important to account for this pool when reporting LULUCF emissions (IPCC, 2019;Johnston and Radeloff, 2019;Böttcher and Reise, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020).…”