Carbon emission reduction potentials through thinned wood in Japan

doi:10.3832/ifor0574-004

Carbon emission reduction potentials through thinned wood in Japan

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 4, Issue 3, Pages 107-112 (2011)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor0574-004
Published: Jun 01, 2011 - Copyright © 2011 SISEF

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Substituting fossil fuel with woody biomass for bioelectricity production has great potentials for carbon emission reductions while increasing forest productivity to increase carbon sequestration and improve ecological functionalities. Until recently, study on such potentials was very limited. Beginning in 2007, Japan’s special budgets were allocated for a 6-year intensive thinning on about 3.3 million ha of young stands for increasing carbon sinks in Japanese forests to meet the capped amount of 47.7 Tg CO₂ year^-1 allowed under the Marrakesh Accord. Because of only 30% of the thinned wood were used for sawntimber, CO₂ and CH₄ must have been emitted from the disposed thinned wood and wood waste. Such emissions and reduction potentials need to be assessed to provide future alternatives for climate change mitigation. We assessed carbon emission reduction potentials when woody biomass from thinned wood is fully utilized for bioelectricity production as compared with the generation of the same amount of energy produced under coal, oil, and natural gas scenarios. Our analytical results show that if all disposed thinned wood and wood waste are utilized to generate energy, about 62.6, 58.3, and 37.8 Tg CO₂ year^-1 could be prevented from emitting depending on emission scenarios or about 33.2, 30.9, and 20.0% of Japan’s reduction commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. On the other hand, if thinned wood and wood waste are not utilized, about 13.4 Tg CO₂ year^-1 would be released due to thinning. Our results suggest that incentives to reducing emission reductions in forest sector in the future climate change mitigation agreements will likely lead to large emission reductions, otherwise leakages due to thinning are unavoidable.

Keywords

Bioenergy policy, Carbon sinks, Disposed thinned wood, Thinning, Woody biomass

Authors’ address

(1)

Graduate School of Applied Informatics, University of Hyogo, 7-1-28-6F Minatojima-minamimachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0047 (Japan)

Corresponding author

N Sasaki
nop.kankyo@ai.u-hyogo.ac.jp

Citation

Etoh H, Sasaki N, Chay S, Ninomiya H (2011). Carbon emission reduction potentials through thinned wood in Japan. iForest 4: 107-112. - doi: 10.3832/ifor0574-004

Paper history

Received: Oct 08, 2010
Accepted: Mar 29, 2011

First online: Jun 01, 2011
Publication Date: Jun 01, 2011
Publication Time: 2.13 months

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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