FEATURED NEWS 10 West Virginia Forestry Association Mountain State Forestry | Spring 24 www.wvfa.org in long-term use or in landfills. Finally, the substitution (blue) sections represent the amount of avoided fossil carbon emissions due to using wood in place of other materials. This portion is a large share of the total, and it accumulates over time: each harvest provides another opportunity to use wood instead of steel, concrete, plastic, and glass. Note that the substitution component is the only carbon in this picture that represents (avoided emissions of) fossil carbon; all the other pools are stores of biogenic carbon. The United States is the world’s largest producer of wood products, and these wood products together provide a huge carbon substitution effect: 188 TgCO2e of fossil carbon emissions avoided by using wood products in 2020. This substitution benefit is only a rough estimate, partly because it hard to know what alternative materials some wood products are substitutions for—what could we use instead of toilet paper? But, even with this uncertainty and some conservative assumptions (e.g. in this case, no carbon substitution benefit for toilet paper), this substitution impact in the United States is large relative to the other forest carbon and wood product carbon storage benefits that are currently reported (Figure 5). Wood Substitution Isn’t on the Carbon Market Unfortunately, forest carbon programs do not yet reward forest landowners or industry for the ‘substitution effect’ of the wood products that their forests provide. And, because of the current emphasis on increasing forestsite carbon storage, the harvest of products may in fact be discouraged. However, it would be possible for the wood substitution effect to be assigned a carbon value. The carbon market already includes credits from Renewable Energy projects (Figure 3), for example by supporting the construction of windmills and solar panels that offer substitution effects by providing alternatives to burning fossil carbon to produce electricity. Wood products’ substitution effects are similar. The state of Georgia has a new law that seeks to document potential carbon offsets for wood in buildings, including credits for the wood products substitution effect . My colleagues and I have recently estimated the potential financial impacts of this idea for buildings made with cross-laminated timber panels and other ‘mass timber’ technology (Figure 6). If a market developed for these carbon offsets, the money generated could provide significant incentives to use more wood in buildings. Additionality and the Future of the Forest Industry One of the challenges with rewarding producers for the carbon value of their wood products is the ‘additionality’ criterion that is commonly applied to carbon offsets. Additionality requires that the carbon payment must fund changes (e.g., changes in forest management) that result in ‘additional’ carbon storage (e.g., delaying harvest to increase forest carbon storage). However, as explained, wood products already provide huge carbon benefits via their storage and substitution effects, thus the carbon saved is not generally considered ‘additional.’ The carbon in mass timber buildings could be additional, given that steel and concrete are the standard option for tall buildings. However, most wood harvest is for traditional wood use options such as residential building construction and paper packaging. Thus, the avoided emissions carbon benefits of forests are like clean air and water: forests and the forest industry have been providing them to society for free. However, simply because we have received the carbon benefits of forest products up to now doesn’t mean they are guaranteed for the future. The hardwood forest industry in the eastern United States is currently dropping to record low rates of production, while the volume of wood in the forests continues to grow. In this unfavorable supply/ demand economic context, landowners face a choice between maintaining working Figure 6. Wood products store biogenic carbon and substitute for the use of fossil-carbon intensive materials. Credit could be paid for these carbon benefits (From Taylor et al. 2023). Figure 5. The carbon impacts associated with forests in the USA, expressed per unit of harvested wood (From Taylor et al. 2024).
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