Ministry of Economic Development and Technology, Wood Industry Directorate, is planning to co-finance the construction of seven wood processing centers in Slovenia. This would ensure production of all types of home-cut wood, including wood for construction, in Slovenia.

Experts from InnoRenew CoE recently collaborated on a study, “How to use the potential of wood and wood industry to achieve sustainable development breakthrough”, where they laid the groundwork for preparation of Slovenia’s 2021–2027 wood industry strategy, which will be developed by the Directorate. One of the study’s key findings was that, in Slovenia, four cubic meters of wood per capita grows annually, but only about one-half of a cubic meter of wood per capita is used to produce products. This finding indicates that there is still a lot of potential for development in the Slovenian wood processing industry. Accordingly, the Directorate is working to increase the amount of wood processed by 2030 to three million cubic meters.

Transforming three million cubic meters of wood into wood-based products, and using them instead of products made out of other, energy more intensive or even fossil-based materials would save greenhouse gas emissions, necessary for making the latter (i.e. substitution effect), because wood transformation is much less energy intensive. Moreover, the carbon bound into wooden products is sequestered, and not returned into the atmosphere. The encouraging finding is that the combined substitution and sequestration effects could amount up to seven and a half million tons of carbon dioxide. This number represents almost 50 percent of the annual carbon dioxide emissions in Slovenia; thus, it would significantly reduce the country’s harmful emissions.

More information about the Directorate’s plans for establishing the wood chain in Slovenia and InnoRenew CoE’s supporting study can be found in the article Država z novim poskusom vzpostavitve lesne verige, published in Finance (printed version).