Abstract
AbstractThe European Union (EU) aims at reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. Within the land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sector, forestry will contribute to this target with CO2 sink, harvested wood products (HWP), and use of wood for material or energy substitution. Despite the fact that the forest sink currently offsets about 9% of the total EU GHG emissions, evaluating its future mitigation potential is challenging because of the complex interactions between human and natural impacts on forest growth and carbon accumulation. The Regulation (EU) 2018/841 has improved robustness, accuracy, and credibility of the accounting of GHG emissions and removals in the LULUCF sector. For the forest sector, the accounting is based on the Forest Reference Level (FRL), i.e., a projected country-specific value of GHG emissions and removals against which the actual GHG emissions and removals will be compared. The resulting difference will count toward the EU GHG target for the period 2021–2030. Here, we provide an overview of the contribution of forests and HWP to the EU carbon sink for the period 2021–2025 (proposed FRLs) and focus on the contribution of mountain forests to the EU carbon sink, through exploring co-benefits and adverse side effects between climate regulation and other ecosystem services.
Highlights
The European Union (EU) aims at reaching carbon neutrality by 2050
We provide an overview of the contribution of forests and harvested wood products (HWP) to the EU carbon sink for the period 2021–2025 and focus on the contribution of mountain forests to the EU carbon sink, through exploring co-benefits and adverse side effects between climate regulation and other ecosystem services
In order to contribute to maintaining the global temperature rise well below 2 °C above preindustrial levels (Paris Agreement1), in 2015, the EU committed to reduce GHG emissions by at least 40% by 2030 compared to 1990.2 Since the EU has set out several climate policies and strategies to meet this target and is preparing to increase its climate ambition, i.e., through further reducing emissions in 2030 and moving toward reaching climate neutrality by the middle of this century
Summary
The EU is at the forefront in implementing climate policies aiming at mitigation over the medium and long term. EU forests and harvested wood products (HWP) contribute to climate change mitigation by removing about 9% of the total GHG emissions from the atmosphere, which mainly originate from energy, transport, and agriculture sectors (EEA 2020). The mitigation potential of EU forests – which cover about 36% of European land area – refers to both their capacity to accumulate/release carbon during forest stands’ development and the use of HWP for bioenergy purposes or material substitution. This is a result of recent mitigation actions and derives from the legacy effects of historical management activities and external environmental changes (Grassi et al 2019). 1 https://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/convention/application/pdf/english_paris_ agreement.pdf 2 https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/strategies/2030_en#tab-0-0 3 https : / / w w w. euractiv. c o m / section / climate - e nv ironment / n e w s / e nv ironment - agenda eu-climate-talks-enter-decisive-phase/ 4 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52019DC0640 5 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52020PC0080 6 The LULUCF sector includes the following categories: forest land, cropland, grassland, wetlands, settlements, other lands, and HWP (IPCC 2019)
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