Outlook of the European forest-based sector: forest growth, harvest demand, wood-product markets, and forest carbon dynamics implications

Abstract: A comprehensive assessment of European forest-based biomass harvest potentials, their future utilization and implications on international wood productmarkets and forest carbon dynamics requires the capability to model forest resource development as well as global markets for wood-based commodities with sufficient geographical and product detail and, most importantly, their interactions. To this aim, we apply a model framework fully integrating a European forest resource model and a global economic forest sector model. In a business-as-usual (BaU) scenario, European Union harvests increase seven percent by 2030 compared to past levels (485 million m3 on 2000-2012 average and 517 million m3 in 2030). The subsequent annual carbon stock change is a ten percent reduction by 2030 compared to 2000-2012 average (equal to 119.3 Tg C yr-1), corresponding to decreasing carbon-dioxide removalby the European forests. A second, high mobilization scenario (HM), characterized by the full utilization of the potential wood supply and a doubling of EU wood pellets consumption, was designed to explore potential impacts on forest carbon dynamics and international wood productmarkets under intensive exploitation of biomass resources. In the HM scenario, harvest increases by 55% (754 million m3 in 2030) compared to the BaU scenario. Fuelwood accounts for this increase in harvest levels as overall competition effects from increased wood pellets consumption outweighs synergies for material uses of wood, resulting in slightly reduced harvests of industrial roundwood. As expected, this increasing harvest level would significantly impair carbon-dioxide forest sequestration from the atmosphere in the medium term (-83% in 2030, compared to 2000-2012 average).