Introduction to Special Issue: Evaluating the Environmental Performance of Wood-Based Biofuels

Abstract

The nonprofit Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM) has been developing comprehensive environmental performance information on wood building materials consistent with life-cycle standards (http://www.corrim.org/). The articles published in this Special Issue of the Forest Products Journal extend the research by the CORRIM group on the environmental performance of wood products to include the impacts from the uses of wood as a source for bioenergy. The earlier work, published in two special issues of Wood and Fiber Science (CORRIM 2005, 2010), developed the inputs and outputs for each stage of processing wood products through the final use of building materials. Lifecycle inventory (LCI) tables were produced for forest regeneration and harvesting in the Pacific Northwest, Southeast (SE), Northeast/North Central (including both softwoods and hardwoods), and Inland Northwest, carried through to the production of softwood and hardwood lumber, hardwood flooring, plywood, oriented strand board (OSB)–SE, glulam beams, laminated veneer lumber (LVL), I-joists, and trusses. The processing LCIs were based on primary data surveys of a sample from mills in each region. Two large-volume, nonstructural products, particleboard and medium-density fiberboard, were also included. An LCI for US-produced resins used in engineered wood and composite products was also developed and is being used to update the LCI for products using resins. The primary product database was uploaded to the US LCI database managed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), where the LCI data for nonwood materials as well as CORRIM’s data on wood materials can be accessed (NREL 2011). The earlier work also included life-cycle assessments (LCAs) for the use of wood products in residential framing, providing a useful comparison for the efficiency of using wood in construction products to reduce carbon emissions as a contrast to using biofuels to reduce emissions (http://www. corrim.org/pubs/articles/2006/FPJproductSubs.pdf, http:// www.corrim.org/pubs/articles/2004/FPJ_Sept2004.pdf). In this issue of the Forest Products Journal, the research findings are reported for a range of potential biofuel uses of wood in conjunction with the production of products. Biofuels and wood products are generally coproducts of sustainable forest management requiring consideration for their relative efficiencies under different production alternatives. Because operational-scale production facilities do not yet exist for liquid biofuels, the data have been derived from processing models instead of primary mill surveys. University cooperators customized NREL processing models and incorporated models of biofuel feedstock collection based on CORRIM’s prior work to measure the impact of collecting industrial roundwood. There are many different woody biomass feedstock options and processing methods. To obtain the best input for the boundaries and scope of the project within the available financial resources, a planning workshop attended by experts in the field was held in October of 2008. A scope of work and work plan was developed that provided a range of the more important collection and processing options. The planning workshop determined the following woody biomass feedstock options to be most important: