MAXIWOOD Marie Cure Individual Fellowship Project

MAXIWOOD is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship project, funded by the European Commission dealing with a crucial sustainability aspect of wood products – their carbon footprint. The project will dive into carbon accounting of the forest-based industry and research how to MAXImise the climate change mitigation potential of WOOD products in Slovenia. Wood is an important resource world-wide, used for a broad variety of purposes. In Europe, wood production has steadily increased over the past 20 years, by ca. 20 % in 2017 compared to 1999, increasing the relevance of its carbon footprint. Forests have the ability help stabilise the Earth’s climate through sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere. The long-term carbon sink effect of the forest-based industries is almost half of the value chain’s total emissions but nevertheless, depends hugely on the type of product. The 100-year weighted average of carbon storage in paper is 2.9 % of the original biomass carbon, while the storage in wood products is 39 % of the original carbon. The connections between the forests and their CO2 footprint are complex: via changes in land cover, carbon sequestration, wood products substitution of more carbon intensive materials, cascading use of wood, manufacturing emissions, end-of-life management, etc. Greener manufacturing processes, end-of-life management as well as cascade use contribute to a reduction of GHG emissions. As carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels inevitably reduce in the future, carbon sink of HWPs will become increasingly relevant as a global warming mitigation measure. In Slovenia, forests represent 58 % of the landcover and are important ecologically, socially and economically. The national woodworking industry experienced downsizing since Slovenia’s independence and is a missed opportunity in terms of CO2 capture. To implement effective policies which would maximize the net positive carbon sink effect of forests, detailed carbon flow data is needed.