The Role of the Forest in an Integrated Assessment Model of the Climate and the Economy

Abstract

This paper develops the FOR-DICE model to explore the potential role of the global forest in reducing climate change. It presents a basic framework for assessing the boreal, tropical, and temperate forests as both a source of renewable energy and a resource to sequester and store carbon. The focus of the paper is to explore whether climate policies should focus on increasing the forest biomass, to sequester and store carbon, or on increasing the use of the forest biomass as a source of energy, to substitute fossil fuels. The paper shows that the global forest can play an important role in reducing atmospheric carbon. The main finding at the global level is that it is better to increase the forest biomass rather than increase the use of forest bioenergy. The reason for this is that the decrease in forest carbon stock created by increased bioenergy harvests is not offset by avoided fossil fuel emissions. This finding suggests that setting high bioenergy targets, without considering the dynamics of the forest stock and the efficiency of bioenergy, will be detrimental to climate change mitigation.

Modeling of the Regional Forest Sector to Improve Economic and Legal Relations in Forest Management

“…1 A detailed explanation of the choice between general and partial equilibrium models is given, e. g. by Eriksson (2015).…”

Pricing forest carbon: Implications of asymmetry in climate policy

“…This paper uses a version of the FOR-DICE model by Eriksson (2015). The FOR-DICE model is an extension of the DICE-2007(Nordhaus, 2008.…”

“…The reader is referred to Eriksson (2015) for further details on the model. The model has three types of forest stocks: tropical forest, temperate forest, and boreal forest.…”

“…Using an extended version of the FOR-DICE (Eriksson, 2015), we investigate the impact of two types of asymmetric carbon policy regimes. In this model, the social planner maximizes welfare by choosing the level of forest controls in addition to savings and energy abatement.…”

Climate impacts of carbon sequestration of forests and material substitution by energy biomass and harvested wood products under boreal conditions

“…Nitrogen fertilization with higher stocking increased the climate impacts further (Paper I), but using up to 20% higher stocking and an earlier final felling may be the best option to increase both the climate impacts and economic returns, compared to the baseline (Papers I, III). Previously, it has been suggested that cost-effective climate benefits of forest biomass could be generated by increasing the growing stock of forests (Richards and Stokes 2004;Eriksson 2015;Vass and Elofsson 2016).…”