Carbon accounting in the forest-based industry – MAXImising the mitigation potential of WOOD products in Slovenia (MAXIWOOD)

GRANT NUMBER: 101024687—MAXIWOOD—H2020-MSCA-IF-2020
PROJECT TITLE:  Carbon accounting in the forest-based industry – MAXImising the mitigation potential of WOOD products in Slovenia (MAXIWOOD)
PROJECT LEADER: Daša Majcen, PhD
PROJECT SUPERVISOR: Andreja Kutnar, PhD
PERIOD: 01.05.2022 – 30.04.2025
BUDGET: €243,060.48
FINANCING: EU, Horizon 2020–H2020-MSCA-IF-2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (Career Restart Panel)
PROJECT COORDINATOR: InnoRenew CoE (Slovenia)

Forests and forest-based industry (FBI) are responsible for three percent of the world’s total CO2 eq. emissions and represent one of the few readily available ways of capturing CO2. Restructuring FBIs towards wood products that offer the benefit of long-term carbon storage has an underexplored global warming mitigation potential. In Slovenia, forests represent 58% of the landcover and are important ecologically, socially and economically. Despite known global warming benefits, untapped harvesting capacity and potential for a revival of FBIs, policy and strategic documents do not address the importance of FBIs as a means of offsetting carbon emissions. It is crucial to develop robust carbon accounting methods, which will enable the understanding of the product/resource interconnections and carbon flows within the forest-based value chain. EU Regulation 2018/841 states that the accounting rules should ensure that MS reflect “accounts changes in the carbon pool of harvested wood products (HWP), in order to recognise and incentivise the enhanced use of HWP with long life-cycles.” However, the regulation refers to the 2013 IPCC guidelines for carbon accounting, which are not sufficiently detailed to be translated into policy measures.

MAXIWOOD will build upon various existing scientific methods in order to provide results detailed enough to inform effective policy making. MAXIWOOD aims to develop a carbon flow method for analysing and projecting the national CO2 flow from sequestration, manufacturing, end-of-life treatment and substitution of HWP. This will facilitate identification of opportunities for the Slovenian FBI to improve its carbon footprint. The developed methodology will be applicable in other countries in Europe, increasing the competitiveness of FBIs and mitigating global warming internationally.

During this project two secondments are planned. First will be at the Slovenian Forestry Institute to jointly work on improving the HWP accounting method, and the second will take place at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission to cooperate on the development of carbon projection models.

InnoRenew CoE project activities

This is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship awarded to Dr Daša Majcen to carry out the MAXIWOOD project under the mentorship of Dr Andreja Kutnar.