Authors
Schau, Erwin M.; Asada, Raphael; Slavec, Ana; Cardellini, Giuseppe
Abstract
Forestry will play an increasingly important role as a raw material contributor since climate change mitigation requires a shift from fossil-based materials to renewable bio-based materials. As consequence, an increase in wood demand is expected (Jonsson et al. 2018). Slovenia has a forest coverage of 58 % while almost half of Austria is covered by forest (48 %). In these countries, the forest-based sector has thus an important role. We look at the environmental impact of forestry in Slovenia and Austria under an increase in wood demand. This contribution has a threefold purpose: 1) To describe the environmental impact of Slovenian and Austrian forestry and forest products with a focus on sawlogs, 2) To describe the environmental impact of a change in demand in forest products, 3) To provide life cycle inventory data for Slovenian and Austrian forestry and importing countries for other LCA needs, for example, LCAs in the construction or biorefinery sectors and for benchmarking purposes. This contribution explores the use of the European Life Cycle Inventory of Forestry Operations (EFO-LCI) database (Cardellini et al. 2018). Different rotation lengths and amount of wood products harvested are explored. The life cycle impact assessment applies the 16 impact categories as recommended by the European Commissions for LCA/Environmental Footprint in Europe (EC, 2013) and provides additional indicators for the climate footprint, important for biobased materials.