In the current reporting guidelines for greenhouse gas inventories, emissions from forestry are reported separately from the national total, assuming that emissions occur at the time of harvest in the country of harvesting. This implies that no carbon goes into long term storage.
The aim of the report "Estimating the net emissions of CO2 from harvested wood products: A comparison of different approaches" (TA-1831/2001) is to test and compare four different proposed approaches for allocating carbon storage and CO2 emissions from wood products to countries, using Norway as an example.
Different estimation methods for the storage are compared and discussed from the point of view of accuracy and availability of data. The approaches do not differ in the accounting of changes in the forest stocks. The main differences between the approaches relate to how the product stocks and foreign trade in wood products are treated. This aspect will give different incentives to national policies with respect to import and export of wood products.
The report is available in PDF:
