As wood products in use store carbon and can contribute to reducing the concentration of atmospheric CO₂, the improved and enhanced use of wood products can be a successful measure in climate change mitigation. This study estimates the amount of carbon stored in the Hungarian harvested wood product (HWP) pool and the CO₂ emissions and removals of the pool. According to our results, the total carbon stock of the Hungarian HWP pool is continuously increasing. We estimated the total carbon stock of the HWP pool to be 17,306 kt C in the year 2020. Our results show that the HWP pool in Hungary is a carbon sink in most parts of the time series, with some years where it turns to a source of emissions. We carried out a simple projection up to 2070, assuming a constant inflow for the projected years that is equal to the average inflow of the last five historic years. This resulted in a decreasing trend in CO₂ removals, with removals already very close to zero in 2070. We concluded that in order to achieve significant future carbon sinks in the HWP pool technological improvements are needed, such as increasing the lifetime of the wood products and expanding the carbon storage capacity of wood products by reusing and recycling wood in a cascade system.

Harvested wood products (HWPs) store a significant amount of carbon, and their lifetime extension and appropriate waste management, recycling, and reuse can contribute remarkably to the achievement of climate goals. In this study, we examined the carbon storage and CO₂ and CH₄ emissions under different scenarios of 200,000 m³ particleboard manufactured in 2020 by a hypothetical manufacturer. The scope of our investigation was to model the effects of a changing product lifetime, recycling rates and waste management practices on the duration of the carbon storage in wood panels and on their emission patterns. The aim of the investigation was to identify the most climate-friendly practices and find the combination of measures related to HWP production and waste management with the highest climate mitigation effect. We used the newly developed HWP-RIAL (recycling, incineration and landfill) model for the projections, which is a combination of two IPCC models parametrized for Hungarian circumstances and supplemented with a self-developed recycling and waste-route-selection submodule. The model runs covered the period 2020–2130. According to the results, the combined scenario with bundled mitigation activities had the largest mitigation potential in the modelled period, resulting in 32% emission reduction by 2050 as compared to the business-as-usual scenario. Amongst individual mitigation activities, increased recycling rates had the largest mitigation effect. The lifetime extension of particleboard can be a complementary measure to support climate mitigation efforts, along with the concept of cascade use and that of circular bioeconomy. Results showed that landfilled wood waste is a significant source of CH₄ emissions on the long term; thus, incineration of wood waste is preferable to landfilling.

As forest-based climate change mitigation has become a crucial element of international climate policy it is of increasing importance to understand the processes leading to the carbon offsetting capacity of the sector. In our study, we assessed the climate benefits of contrasting forest management strategies: decreasing harvest and enlarging the forest carbon stock, or increasing harvest to increase carbon uptake, wood product carbon pools, and substitution effects. We developed the Forest Industry Carbon Model (FICM) which is a new carbon accounting tool covering forest biomass, dead organic matter, soil, and harvested wood product pools, as well as avoided emissions through product and energy substitution. We modeled the carbon balance of the Hungarian forest industry under three different scenarios. In the business as usual (BAU) scenario, we assumed no changes in the current harvest and afforestation levels. In the extensification scenario, we assumed that the harvest and afforestation levels drop to half, while in the intensification scenario, we assumed an increase in afforestation, improved industrial wood assortments, and a gradual increase in logging, reaching the highest level as per sustainability criteria by 2050. Our results show that the intensification scenario is characterized by the largest net removals and the maximized product and energy substitution effects. By 2050, the net forest industry carbon balance reaches −8447 kt CO₂ eq under the BAU scenario, while −7011 kt CO₂ eq is reached under the extensification scenario and −22,135 kt CO₂ eq is reached under the intensification scenario. Although substitution effects are not accounted for under the land-based (LULUCF) sector in the greenhouse gas inventory, the emission reductions in the industry and energy sectors have beneficial effects on the national carbon balance. Modeling results show that the 2030 LULUCF greenhouse gas removal target set by EU legislation for Hungary is reached under the intensification scenario. To achieve this outcome, widespread innovation is needed in the wood sector. The modeling results show that nonutilization of forests can only be a very short-term solution; however, its favorable effects will be reversed by 2050 resulting in additional emissions compared to the BAU scenario.

The demand for woody biomass as a key raw material of the developing circular bioeconomy is expected to increase. This has led to the need of increased timber productivity and the search for new procurement methods, new assortments, and innovative supply chains. Timber is regarded as a climate-friendly resource, which can contribute to climate change mitigation through long-term carbon storage and through the substitution of fossil products and fossil fuels. Thus, it is of high importance to assess the amount of timber that can be harvested without compromising sustainability concerns. In this paper, we examined the amount of the wood stock accumulated in overmature stands in Hungary. We define overmature stands being those stands where the actual age of the stand is over its cutting age prescribed by the forest authority. According to our results, 11.5% of the standing volume in Hungary is overmature, and the wood stock of overmature stands has increased by more than 250% in the last 40 years. The importance of the overmature forests is enormous, as they represent an unused wood stock reserve, which could be available to meet the growing demand for timber. In our study, we also conducted a simple yield table-based projection on the maximum amount of timber available for harvest in the period 2020–2100 based on the data of the national forestry database and the cutting ages prescribed by the forest authority in the forest management plans. According to our results, even without new afforestation, more timber becomes available for harvest annually in the 2020–2100 period than the level of the average harvests of the last five historic years. In the 2020–2050 period, an additional 56% of timber is projected to become available for harvest as a maximum. This means a maximum additional potential of 4059 thousand m³, even without the harvesting of the stands, which were already overmature in the starting year of the projection. In the first part of the projection period, industrial wood available for harvest is forecasted to be above the average historic level of industrial wood production. However, in the second part of the projection period, the industrial wood yield shows a decreasing tendency and even drops below the 2017–2021 average. The decreasing availability of industrial roundwood in the second part of the projection period points out the importance of innovation in the wood industry. The inclusion of drought tolerant species, which are nowadays less used for industrial purposes seems inevitable in the production of high-quality wood products.

To determine the optimum time to harvest the trees is one of the most interesting problems in the economics of forest resources. It is highly debated whether forests in the Northern hemisphere should be used as carbon sinks or harvested more for long- or short-term wood use for carbon storage in long-lived wood products and for the use of bioenergy. In our study we examined the trend of the cutting ages by tree species, ownership and function in the period of 2006–2021 based on the data of the National Forestry Database (NFD). We also examined whether any changes in the effective rotation linked to the change of the Hungarian Forest Act in 2017 could be observed. We concluded that there were two main sub-groups in the case of which different trends applied. In the case of state-owned forests and indigenous species with a long rotation period, the actual harvesting ages had an increasing trend in the last fifteen years, while in the case of some species with short rotation periods and lower levels of naturalness, the cutting ages in private forests had a decreasing trend. The rotation period of black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) showed a decreasing trend with a significant decrease in private production forests between years 2016 and 2021. This implies that since the more permissive regulation, the management of private black locust stands has moved towards the economically more profitable 20 years rotation cycle. We concluded that the new Forest Act of 2017 can be regarded as an important step towards the separation of forest functions, which means that the role of state-owned forests and forests with high nature conservation value is to protect biodiversity, provide ecosystem services and mitigate climate change through carbon storage in trees, dead wood and in the soil, while the role of forest plantations and forests with lower level of naturalness is to provide timber which is a climate-friendly resource, and which can contribute to climate change mitigation through long-term carbon storage in wood products, wooden buildings and through the substitution of fossil products and fossil fuels.

Harvested wood products (HWPs) store a significant amount of carbon while long-lived products and wooden buildings can be among the most effective means for carbon storage. Wood products’ lifetime extension and appropriate waste management, recycling, and reuse can further contribute to the achievement of climate goals. In our study we projected under 10 different scenarios the carbon storage, carbon dioxide and methane emissions of the Hungarian HWP pool up to 2050 in order to find the combination of wood industry-related measures with the highest climate change mitigation effect. For the projection we used the country-specific HWP-RIAL model to predict emissions associated with the end-of-life and waste management of wood products. The main conclusion is that without additional measures the Hungarian HWP pool would turn from a carbon sink to a source of emissions by 2047. To maintain the Hungarian HWP pool to be a continuous carbon sink it is essential to implement additional climate mitigation measures including cascading product value chains, and approaches of a circular bioeconomy. We find the most effective individual measures are increasing product half-life, increasing recycling rate and increasing industrial wood production through increased industrial wood assortments and increased harvest. With the combination of these measures a maximum average annual climate change mitigation potential of 1.5 Mt CO₂ equivalents could be reached during the 2022–2050 period.