The global potential for carbon capture and storage from forestry

Yuanming Ni; Gunnar S Eskeland; Jarl Giske; Jan-Petter Hansen

doi:10.1186/s13021-016-0044-y

The global potential for carbon capture and storage from forestry

Carbon Balance Manag. 2016 Feb 26;11(1):3. doi: 10.1186/s13021-016-0044-y. eCollection 2016 Dec.

Authors

Yuanming Ni¹, Gunnar S Eskeland², Jarl Giske³, Jan-Petter Hansen⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics, Helleveien 30, 5045 Bergen, Norway.
² Department of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics, Helleveien 30, 5045 Bergen, Norway ; Centre for Applied Research (SNF), Helleveien 30, 5045 Bergen, Norway.
³ Department of Biology, University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway.
⁴ Department of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics, Helleveien 30, 5045 Bergen, Norway ; Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, Allegt. 55, 5007 Bergen, Norway.

Abstract

Background: Discussions about limiting anthropogenic emissions of CO[Formula: see text] often focus on transition to renewable energy sources and on carbon capture and storage (CCS) of CO[Formula: see text]. The potential contributions from forests, forest products and other low-tech strategies are less frequently discussed. Here we develop a new simulation model to assess the global carbon content in forests and apply the model to study active annual carbon harvest 100 years into the future.

Results: The numerical experiments show that under a hypothetical scenario of globally sustainable forestry the world's forests could provide a large carbon sink, about one gigatonne per year, due to enhancement of carbon stock in tree biomass. In addition, a large amount of wood, 11.5 GT of carbon per year, could be extracted for reducing CO[Formula: see text] emissions by substitution of wood for fossil fuels.

Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that carbon harvest from forests and carbon storage in living forests have a significant potential for CCS on a global scale.

Keywords: Carbon capture and storage; Global forest; Simulations.