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Integrated scenario modelling of energy, greenhouse gas emissions and forestry

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Abstract

Preventing dangerous climate change requires actions on several sectors. Mitigation strategies have focused primarily on energy, because fossil fuels are the main source of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Another important sector recently gaining more attention is the forest sector. Deforestation is responsible for approximately one fifth of the global emissions, while growing forests sequester and store significant amounts of carbon. Because energy and forest sectors and climate change are highly interlinked, their interactions need to be analysed in an integrated framework in order to better understand the consequences of different actions and policies, and find the most effective means to reduce emissions. This paper presents a model, which integrates energy use, forests and greenhouse gas emissions and describes the most important linkages between them. The model is applied for the case of Finland, where integrated analyses are of particular importance due to the abundant forest resources, major forest carbon sink and strong linkage with the energy sector. However, the results and their implications are discussed in a broader perspective. The results demonstrate how full integration of all net emissions into climate policy could increase the economic efficiency of climate change mitigation. Our numerical scenarios showed that enhancing forest carbon sinks would be a more cost-efficient mitigation strategy than using forests for bioenergy production, which would imply a lower sink. However, as forest carbon stock projections involve large uncertainties, their full integration to emission targets can introduce new and notable risks for mitigation strategies.

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Notes

  1. A small negative price is set because otherwise there would be no incentive to care about the forest carbon sink and do rational harvesting decisions, like thin during the stage of fast growth and final fell close or after the saturation of growth. The price is kept small so that it does not affect other decisions made by the model, such as the total harvested volume.

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Acknowledgements

The research has been done in the project ECOSUS, funded by the Academy of Finland (decision no.: 257174).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo, Finland

    Riikka Siljander & Tommi Ekholm

  2. Ministry of Environment, Helsinki, Finland

    Riikka Siljander

  3. Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Tommi Ekholm

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  1. Riikka Siljander
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  2. Tommi Ekholm
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Correspondence to Tommi Ekholm.

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Siljander, R., Ekholm, T. Integrated scenario modelling of energy, greenhouse gas emissions and forestry. Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change 23, 783–802 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-017-9759-7

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