A vibrant wood products market is good for Oregon and the climate

A vibrant wood products market is good for Oregon and the climate

The Oregonian

By Kristina McNitt

In his April 21 op-ed "Our forests can make Oregon the first carbon-neutral state," Dominick DellaSala proposes that the state can achieve this feat by disincentivizing wood production from our forestlands. He believes that Oregon's forests have the potential to be a large carbon sink, and that they should be managed to more aggressively offset emissions from other sectors. We are confident that his proposals would not actually decrease global carbon emissions and would come at great cost to Oregonians.

DellaSala alludes to the fact that Oregon's forests are already sequestering huge amounts of carbon. What he doesn't tell you is that this is true across all ownership classes. Federal forestlands, state forestlands and private industrial forestlands are all growing more trees every year than are harvested or lost to wildfire or mortality. In fact, the 30 million acres of forestland across the state are sequestering approximately half of all of Oregon's carbon emissions every year.

But rather than praise Oregon forest landowners for being part of the climate change solution, DellaSala proposes that they bear ever more of the burden. By taxing industrial landowners and paying others to stop cutting trees, he believes that even more carbon emissions from other sectors can be stored on Oregon forestlands. Putting aside the fundamental inequity of making forestland owners solve a problem caused by others, curtailing harvest means curtailing the forest products industry and all of the otherwise carbon-neutral employment in rural communities those industries support.

But the real punchline is this: Domestic development and redevelopment will not stop. New houses are built every day in Oregon and across the United States. By reducing the state's wood production, we only ensure that developers turn to wood from other jurisdictions with more lenient environmental protections than we have here. Or worse, that they use less-climate-friendly alternatives to wood. For this reason, DellaSala's proposals would not actually decrease global carbon emissions and, in fact, could increase net emissions depending on what products are substituted for wood. 

We hope that reasonable people see DellaSala's op-ed for what it is: A thinly-veiled anti-logging agenda. In most mainstream circles working on climate change issues, including the International Panel on Climate Change, use of wood products is strongly encouraged. The panel concluded that in "the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fiber or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit."

Of course, wood products come from trees. And there's no better place in the world to grow (and re-grow) trees than Oregon. In light of its positive contribution to climate change, we look forward to working with state lawmakers on finding ways to encourage the use of more Oregon wood, not less.

Kristina McNitt is president of the Oregon Forest & Industries Council, which is based in Salem.

Using Oregon's forests for bioenergy production has a down side: increased carbon emissions

By Eric Mortenson, The Oregonian

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Matthew Preusch/The OregonainWood chips are piled next to a biomass burner at the D.R. Johnson Company's Prairie City power plant.

 

Oregon's blue-sky thinking on alternative energy envisions the state's forests as a terrific source of biomass. Woody debris from thinning, brush clearing and removing dead trees could generate electricity, heat manufacturing plants and be turned into biofuels.

 

Better yet, the thinking goes, such work could restore forest health and provide jobs in rural communities in addition to helping the state meet its renewable energy goals. The Oregon Forest Resources Institute calls it the "woody biomass triple win."

 

Researchers at Oregon State University rain on that notion.

 

In a four-year study OSU describes as the largest and most comprehensive to date, researchers say managing the forests for biofuel production will increase carbon dioxide emissions from the forests by at least 14 percent.

 

"Most people assume that wood bioenergy will be carbon-neutral, because the forest re-grows and there's also the chance of protecting forests from carbon emissions due to wildfire," researcher Tara Hudiburg  said in an OSU news release. But the study shows removing forest debris for bioenergy use will release more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than current practices burning it or leaving it in place, she said.

 

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, involved 80 types of forests in 19 regions of Oregon, Washington and California, ranging from wet coastal forests to semi-arid woodlands.

 

Hudiburg and OSU forestry professor Beverly Law, co-author of the report, said the implications of managing forests for energy production have not been fully considered. "If our ultimate goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, producing bioenergy from forests will be counterproductive," Law said in the news release.

 

Others believe the researchers examined the issue from too narrow a view.

 

Paul Barnum, executive director of the forest research institute, said Oregon's dry eastern forests have "unnaturally high levels of biomass" that can be used to generate electricity and heat.

 

"If we don't actively manage these forests, we run the risk of catastrophic wildfire" that would be disastrous to wildlife, water quality and buildings, he said in an email.

 

Norm Johnson, also a forestry professor at Oregon State, is a biomass supporter. Burning wood doesn't produce energy as efficiently as burning fossil fuels. But new tree growth will recapture the excess carbon emissions from biomass over time, he said.

 

"In the long run, it's better" than burning fossil fuels, Johnson said. "In the short run, yes, we'd probably conclude it's not as efficient."

 

At this point, Oregon burns "slash," mainly branches and tree tops, left over from logging to reduce fire risk. Using it to produce energy in place of fossil fuels is a better alternative for the environment, Johnson said.

 

The idea has bipartisan political backing in Oregon and nationally. Gov. John Kitzhaber, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., are among its strong supporters.

 

Oregon treats biomass as renewable power, the same as solar and wind, when it comes to meeting green power generation requirements. Oregon and the federal government also subsidize forest biomass energy projects.

 

Kitzhaber remains committed to developing biomass energy for the wide range of benefits it provides, said Tim Raphael, the governor's communications director.

 

Rural economic development, forest health, reducing the use of fossil fuels and even international energy security are among the factors, Raphael said.

 

"That's really the filter that we've looked at it through, and I'm not sure that was the filter of the study," he said.

 

"I don't know much about producing jobs, habitat restoration or wildlife restoration -- I know a lot about carbon," Hudiburg responded in a telephone interview. "If your goal is reduce carbon emissions, then it will not help. But if you have other goals, then yes, maybe."

 

"It's never going to be a win-win situation for everything," she said.

--Eric Mortenson

Carbon ‘sinks’ a meager silver lining to forest plan

Published: August 09. 2011

The Bulletin, Bend

Nature can be allowed to decide the fate of Oregon forests — come wildfire, come disease, come what may. But most people don’t want that. So the debate is over how public forests should be managed.

The Northwest Forest Plan, adopted in 1994, was one major attempt at management. Now scientists from Oregon State University and elsewhere say they have found an unintended benefit of the plan: it’s helped with carbon. Not harvesting public forests means the forests have become a carbon “sink” — a place that absorbs more carbon than it releases. It’s called carbon sequestration.

Governments and scientists have been looking at how forests might be used to offset or reduce carbon emissions. If the carbon storage of a forest can be accurately modeled and a price put on that, it could become part of the debate over whether public forest land is harvested.

But this consequence must be weighed against what else the Northwest Forest Plan has done. The goal of the plan was to save species, especially the Northern spotted owl, and to “produce a predictable and sustainable level of timber sales.” It didn’t work out as planned.

Owl habitat was saved. But instead of a spotted owl paradise, the barred owl thrives in the same habitat and threatens to drive the spotted owl out. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has considered killing thousands of barred owls in another attempt to save the spotted owl.

Then there’s the timber harvest. Whether or not you believe too many trees were cut down on federal forest land before the plan, the harvests have only been about half the level the plan itself saw as sustainable. It’s made it more difficult to do the thinning necessary to reduce the danger of wildfire. And it wiped out jobs in Oregon’s timber industry. Counties depending on proceeds from timber revenue are still struggling with how to make up for it.

“From 1990 to 2000, private-sector forestry and logging declined from 15,774 jobs statewide to 12,887, a loss of 2,887 jobs, or 18 percent,” the state Employment Department says. Timber harvests dropped from 6.2 billion board feet to 3.9 billion board feet over the same period. By 2009, it was down to 9,391 jobs and 2.7 million board feet.

The Northwest Forest Plan didn’t do all of that, but nobody believes it hasn’t played a major part.

The new study will be used by some to further the argument that there is more reason to not harvest trees on public land. But the Northwest Forest Plan has sequestered more than just carbon. It’s sequestered jobs. It’s sequestered necessary thinning. It’s meant that the trees to build homes are cut far away where there is little regulation and oversight. Managing our forests should not mean the only trees that can be cut are from somewhere else.