Tracing Wood Carbon from global Forests through the Processing Hub Austria

Conventional LULUCF accounting attributes forest carbon loss to the country where harvesting occurs, while setting emissions from wood processing to zero. Although globally consistent, this approach induces flawed policy incentives when assessing the impacts of wood processing. To address this, processing industries must be linked to forest carbon flows in origin countries. Focusing on Austria—a major wood processing hub— we integrate detailed national wood supply chain data with the global wood trade model FORBIO for the 2015–2017 average. By applying country-specific harvest loss factors, we estimate the gross harvest embodied in Austria’s wood flows and compare it to forest carbon dynamics in origin countries. Austria’s gross harvest was over four times its forest carbon sink. Gross harvest embodied in imports from major neighboring countries equaled to 15–170% of their own forest carbon sinks or sources. Of all processing industries, the sawmill and pulp-paper industries had the highest embodied gross harvest (6.7 and 4.6 Mt C/yr, respectively); Of the final uses, 7.1 Mt C/yr were embodied in energy use, 3.8 Mt C/yr in material use, and 6.0 Mt C/yr in exports. The input-based account of embodied gross harvest, i.e. gross harvest of domestic extraction plus imports, was 1.6 times the consumption-based footprint. While sawmills relied largely on European sources, the paper sector sourced 12% of its embodied harvest from Asia and the Americas. Our results relativize climate neutrality claims of wood processing and end uses, show the importance of input-based accounts for hub countries, and nuance regionality claims.