network of research and training centres and programmes
Issue 28: November-December 2003
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UNU Update | |
| The newsletter of United Nations
University and its network of research and training centres and programmes |
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Issue 28: November-December 2003 |
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Use logging waste to cut
The European Union could cut its carbon dioxide emissions 4-6 percent by converting just one-third of its “logging slash” and unused trees from logging operations to electricity, according to a new international research report published by United Nations University. The
report, released at the World Forestry
Congress, Quebec City, Sept. 21-28, says the electricity potential
from “logging residue” could produce in the EU the energy equivalent
of 8 million tons of oil, roughly the volume used each year in Ireland,
Finland or Denmark. Extracting energy from the residue of forestry operations would make valuable use of a vast untapped resource and add nothing to greenhouse gas emissions, the study says, since the carbon dioxide from decomposing logging residue is bound for the atmosphere anyway. Three quarters of the EU’s forestry is in Germany, France, Sweden and Finland. “For countries rich in forests, substituting wood for fossil fuels is an attractive means to meet obligations of the Kyoto protocol,” says the final summary report of World Forests, Society and Environment (WFSE), an international research project into global forest issues involving 149 scientists worldwide. The WFSE project was initiated in 1996 by UNU, the Finnish Forest Research Institute and the European Forest Institute, researches the relationship between forests, society and the environment. Five other global forest research institutions have since joined the project. In its report, the WFSE team
notes more than half of the global harvest of wood is used for fuel,
mainly in developing countries. Biomass currently accounts for about 3 percent of the energy
consumption of the European Union countries.
However, the WFSE report points out: “There is significant
potential to contribute to further reduction of CO2
emissions from power production through the recovery of
residual biomass from forest operations.” “It is already clear that a number of countries will have great difficulty meeting their Kyoto emissions targets,” said UNU Rector Hans van Ginkel. “Using wood biomass as an alternative energy source could make a significant contribution to their greenhouse gas reduction efforts.” On the broader topic of global
climate change and its impact on forests, the researchers found that even
a 1 degree Celsius change in annual average temperature can have a marked
effect on the growth rate and regeneration capacity of trees. The study also evaluates the
practices, policy and prospects in all the world’s major forestry
countries including Brazil, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with a
particular focus on Russia and China. Dr Matti Palo, WFSE Research Director and Professor of Environmental Policy at Seoul National University, South Korea, called tropical deforestation one of the greatest challenges facing the world today. “Brazil lost another 2.5 million ha of natural tropical forest last year,” Prof. Palo said. “Deforestation is expanding again after some years of decline in Brazil, which features about one third of all remaining tropical forests on Earth, with vast biological diversity, timber and carbon stocks. “Despite all the strong rhetoric, human and financial resources from national governments, inter-governmental organizations and NGOs in the past 20 years, we have yet to fully stop, much less reverse, the problem of tropical deforestation.”
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