LOW-CARBON
ENERGY ADDS TO FORESTRY’S CLIMATE BENEFITS
By William Stewart, Ph.D.
Forest
management can lead to cleaner air, safer communities and lower firefighting
costs, yet its greatest value may lie in addressing climate change and what it keeps
hidden underground.
Managing
forests helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions in numerous ways. It reduces the threat
and severity of wildfire, a significant source of avoidable emissions in
California and produces a sustainable supply of low-energy building products.
Less well known is its role in keeping fossil fuels underground.
Research
at Blodgett State Demonstration Forest and elsewhere has shown that active forest
management can provide significantly greater carbon benefits than management strategies
that set forests aside in reserves.
While
relatively young reserved and managed forests sequester, or remove from the atmosphere
and store, roughly the same amount of carbon in standing trees, actively managed
forests can provide the additional benefits of reduced fossil-fuel use by using
wood rather than cement and steel in buildings, and producing low-carbon energy
from forest and sawmill residues.
Managing
forests to reduce fuel-loads provides immediate wildfire-related dividends.
Fewer fuels means less-intense wildfire, greater firefighter safety, lesser
environmental consequence and fewer greenhouse gas emissions. There’s great carbon
benefit right there – emissions avoided and standing carbon protected – but
capturing the thinnings that might otherwise have
gone up in smoke and using them to generate low-carbon energy can be an added
plus.
Additional carbon benefits
When
forests are thinned, the harvested biomass or branches, brush and small trees can
be chipped and used to produce energy. Biomass
energy takes carbon that is above ground – wood chips – and keeps it above ground
by burning it in power plants to produce heat and electricity. Biomass energy is
carbon neutral because no more carbon is released producing energy than would
be if the vegetation were to simply decay.
Burning
fossil fuels, conversely, takes carbon that was stored safely underground and
releases it to the atmosphere. Burning fossil fuels to produce energy results
in a net increase in carbon emissions every time.
Forest
management can reduce emissions from wildfire and emissions from burning fossil
fuels because every megawatt generated from woody biomass can replace a
megawatt generated from emission-spewing fossil fuels. Substituting biomass energy, a by-product of sustainable
forest management, for coal-fired energy could make a significant impact on California’s
carbon footprint.
But
California is under-investing in forest management. California taxpayers spend
more than $1 billion annually to fight wildfire and next to nothing to reduce
fuels at the source. More than 400 trees
per acre stand in many Sierra forests where about 70 stood before the Gold
Rush, tree mortality is extremely high and elevated fuel accumulations clutter
millions of acres of forestlands. Continuing down a path of increasing wildfire
severity, firefighting costs and emissions has serious long-term consequences.
Forest
management offers wildfire relief and a sustainable clean-energy source close to
millions of Californians. Yet California’s forestry infrastructure is in
decline and forest management has been brought to a virtual halt. Harvest on public forestlands is down 90
percent over the last 25 years, the same timeframe during which firefighting
costs have skyrocketed.
Storing
carbon and creating jobs The most effective way to
sequester more carbon in forests is to use the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to focus on restoring resilient
forests to California’s landscape. Californians would benefit from forest
management policies that reward performance over time and create investment opportunities
that put people back to work, leverage renewable energy benefits and reduce the
incidence of severe wildfire. This is rapidly becoming the norm in Europe where
forest residues increasingly are used to replace coal to generate heat and
electricity.
Unfortunately, forestry’s climate benefits aren’t worth much in terms of
cold hard cash. Carbon policy should address that. Stewardship contracts that leverage lumber and
biomass energy production to reduce fuels across greater areas could be
extended. Forestry regulations that
create longer-term investment windows are needed to justify the capital
expenses required to achieve sustainable climate benefits. Tax policy should level
the playing field for biomass energy, which receives a fraction of the
incentives that wind, solar and geothermal garner.
We must back up our words and skeletal structure of facilities that can
produce low-carbon building materials and energy with actions that encourage
innovation, create family wage jobs and conserve California’s forest resources.
We can’t export our greenhouse gas emissions and wildfire problems but
we can invest in a locally grown, clean-energy producing solution. Until a realistic investment environment is
established forest health will continue to deteriorate, wildfire severity will
likely increase and carbon benefits will go unattained.
William Stewart, Ph.D. is a forest specialist
with the University of California, Berkeley and a registered professional
forester. His research focuses on the economics of forest management in
California.