Forests: Carbon sequestration, biomass energy, or both? - Alice Favero (Georgia Tech)

• Emission taxes on biomass alone are inefficient, and lead to less forestland, less carbon in forests, and more carbon in the atmosphere. [...] • Optimize harvests (age and quantity) and investments (area regenerated and $/ha), subject to • Demand for wood (scenario) • Land constraints: rental function (cost of land) and maximum area defined by MC2 (Kim et al., 2017) • An investment cost function (decreasing returns to scale in investments) • 250-400 forest land classes globally, depending on version. [...] Carbon implications of policies that focus on forest stocks Net exchange with the atmosphere Negative is sequestration from atmosphere, • Carbon rental policies increase Positive is emission to atmosphere forest stocks and reduce carbon 200 100 stocks in the atmosphere. [...] Changing this assumption to account for adoption of BECCS in the future would further decrease atmospheric stocks Net exchange with atmosphere (GtCO2) Forestland implications • All approaches lead to an increase in 2,000 forestland area globally (b) 1,800 1,600 1,400 • Assuming carbon neutrality (no 1,200 policy) and the tax policy lead to 1,000 about the same effect on total land 800 600 400 • Th. [...] • Policies that value the full exchange of carbon between forests and the atmosphere are efficient, and lead to large reductions in atmospheric carbon in strong policy scenarios (e.g., RCP 1.9).