Paul Rougieux, Universität Hohenheim
Modelling the Trade-off between the Forest Carbon Sink and Wood Harvest in the EU
Carbon sequestration in European forests has decreased over the past decade with the forest sink moving away from the direction needed for climate mitiga- tion. In 2020, tree growth corresponded to 914 million m3 per year in EU forests, wood harvest was 577 million m3 and the forest carbon sink was -334 million tons of CO2 equivalent. We connect an economic and a biophysical model to simulate six harvest scenarios that result in a forest sink from 158 to 647 million tons of CO2 eq until 2070. Scenarios of harvest intensification i.e. harvesting the same amount over a smaller area improve the trade-off between harvest and sink. These higher sink values for the same level of harvest allows scenarios of increased consumption to reach short term targets by 2030, but the forest sink deteriorates in the long term. Counterfactual scenarios reducing wood demand to a level similar to the mid 1990's make it possible to increase the forest sink and even over-achieve the estimated contribution of forest in the EU climate targets for 2030 and beyond.