How forests and forest products can help meet Canada’s climate goals

On this page

• Introduction
• Forest management
• Land use change
• Wood products
• Forest bioenergy
• Tools for assessing forest carbon management opportunities

Introduction

Forests play a vital role in the Earth’s carbon cycle. As trees grow, carbon dioxide (CO₂) is absorbed from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and stored as carbon in tree trunks, branches, roots, leaves, dead organic matter, and soil.

CO₂ can also continue to be stored as carbon in wood products for varying lengths of time after trees are harvested. On the other hand, trees and the soil in which they grow release CO₂ and other greenhouse gases (GHG) when they decay or burn. This can happen due to wildland fires, insect outbreaks, or other disturbances. Wood products also release CO₂ and other GHGs when they are burned or decay in landfills.

Canada has committed to cut its GHG emissions by 45% to 50% below 2005 levels by 2035 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. These targets will require both GHG emission reductions and carbon sequestration.

Although efforts towards these targets must focus on far-reaching transformations in energy systems and human behaviour, forests and the use of forest products also have an important role to play. In the fight against climate change, every effort to reduce emissions or increase carbon sequestration matters.

Human activities in the forest and the forest sector can help Canada meet its emission reduction goals in the following ways:

• Increasing CO₂ sequestration: Removing additional CO₂ from the atmosphere
• Increasing carbon storage: Increasing and better maintaining carbon storage in forests and wood products
• Reducing CO₂ emissions: Reducing forest-related GHG emissions and substituting carbon-intensive materials and energy sources with forest products

Actions that reduce GHG emissions or increase carbon sequestration/storage to slow climate change are collectively referred to as climate change mitigation.

In the forest sector, the effectiveness and impact of different mitigation strategies can vary, particularly by region, and employing a diverse range of approaches can maximize overall benefits.

Researchers from the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) and other organizations continue to explore ways that forests and wood use can mitigate climate change.

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Activities that increase CO₂ sequestration include enhancing fertilization, strengthening tree genetics, and expanding selective harvesting. Increasing resilience to wildland fires, replacing high-emission products with wood, and decreasing slash pile burning reduce CO₂ emissions. Increasing forest conservation increases carbon storage. Creating new forests increases both CO₂ sequestration and storage. Recycling wood products will both reduce CO₂ emissions and increase carbon storage.

Forest management

Managing forests to be healthy and resilient helps increase carbon sequestration and reduce emissions from forests. For example, making forests more resilient to wildland fires through proactive management actions such as thinning and prescribed burning can help avoid future emissions from large-scale catastrophic wildfires.

Other forest management actions that can help increase carbon sequestration include managing pest outbreaks, planting a variety of tree species, fertilization, extending the age at which trees are harvested, and ensuring forests are regenerating successfully after they have been harvested or naturally disturbed. These actions can help maintain the overall health of forests, while also meeting society’s needs for wood products.

Land use change

Mitigation efforts involving changes to land use focus on enhancing carbon sequestration through afforestation and avoided deforestation. Afforestation refers to planting trees on a non-forest area to convert it back to forest land (e.g., restoring forest cover on previously deforested farmland or industrial sites). Increasing and restoring forest cover can have significant benefits for the environment, biodiversity, and climate change mitigation.

Avoided deforestation involves efforts related to forest conservation to prevent forest land from changing to other land uses. Preventing the conversion of forests into other land uses, such as cropland, urban development, or industrial sites, can help maintain carbon storage and protect carbon sinks, biodiversity, and forest connectivity.

Wood products

Wood products can provide important climate change mitigation benefits. For example, long-lived wood products can store carbon for decades. Increasing the use of wood products as a low-carbon building material and substituting emissions-intensive construction materials such as concrete, steel, and plastics with sustainably sourced wood products can reduce overall emissions.

Sustainable forest management and extending the durability and circularity of wood products can further ensure the continued role of wood products in mitigating climate change by lowering overall emissions while also meeting society’s demands.

Durable wood products, if well-designed and maintained, can store carbon for a long time. In addition, carbon can also be stored longer by recycling and repurposing wood products at the end of their lifespan, which promotes a circular economy.

Forest bioenergy

The mitigation benefits of forest products extend beyond their useful life. The residues generated during forest management activities, during the manufacturing of wood products, and from wood products at their end-of-life can be used as a renewable source of energy to generate heat and/or power, known as bioenergy.

Unlike the burning of fossil fuels, which releases carbon that was trapped in geological reserves millions of years ago, the emissions from bioenergy are part of the natural carbon cycle (i.e., biogenic carbon) in which carbon removals occur in parallel with the emissions from biomass combustion under sustainable forest management. This represents a major economic opportunity for Canada’s forest sector to enhance productivity and diversify its output by optimizing resource use to create additional value from residues.

Currently, the forest sector has significantly reduced its carbon emissions and energy use by using residues to generate its own heat and power, which has reduced the sector’s use and reliance on fossil fuels and has contributed to waste reduction. More opportunities for this exist, such as pairing bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) technologies to achieve long-term CO₂ removal. This can further reduce emissions in Canada’s forest sector while also offsetting emissions in other hard-to-abate sectors, making it an appealing option for climate change mitigation.

Tools for assessing forest carbon management opportunities

Tools are freely available to assess how different forest management activities can affect the carbon balance. The Canadian Forest Service has developed models to calculate forest carbon stocks and stock changes (Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector and Generic Carbon Budget Model). These tools can help forest managers assess the carbon implications of their actions and consider alternative approaches that may have a lower impact.