Abstract
Green Resources AS, a plantation, carbon offset, forest products, and renewable energy company with operations in Eastern Africa, calculated carbon footprints for 2008 and 2009. In both years, the footprint was dominated by removals of CO2 from the atmosphere attributable to afforestation. These removals were more than 17 times the emissions from the company’s value chain. The largest difference between the 2008 and 2009 footprints was due to loss of forest carbon caused by fire. Otherwise, the most important changes in the footprint were related to plantation expansion and growth, and increased output of products in 2009, which caused increases in several types of emissions. The remaining elements of the footprint (manufacturing, forestry operations, transport, and upstream emissions related to non-fibrous inputs, fuels, and electricity) were approximately equal. The use of the charcoal manufactured by the company avoided coal-related emissions equal to approximately one-quarter of the company’s value chain emissions.
Highlights
Recent years have seen increasing efforts to understand the implications of products, activities, and policies on atmospheric greenhouse gases
One important tool in these efforts has been life cycle assessment (LCA), or the carbon footprint, which is an estimate of the life cycle impacts of a product or activity on atmospheric greenhouse gases
A wide range of forest products have been examined in LCA and carbon footprint studies, ranging from materials used in home construction to biofuels (e.g. ,see Cherubini et al, 2009)
Summary
Recent years have seen increasing efforts to understand the implications of products, activities, and policies on atmospheric greenhouse gases. One important tool in these efforts has been life cycle assessment (LCA), or the carbon footprint, which is an estimate of the life cycle impacts of a product or activity on atmospheric greenhouse gases. A wide range of forest products have been examined in LCA and carbon footprint studies, ranging from materials used in home construction (e.g., see Salazar & Sowlati, 2008; Perez-Garcia, Lippke, Comnick & Manriquez, 2005; Gustavsson & Sathre, 2006) to biofuels Several industry-wide carbon footprint studies have been performed on the forest products industry (e.g., see Miner, 2010 and Heath et al, 2010). Few corporate carbon footprint studies, have been published in the literature
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