Substitution and storage come as a pair

In the foreword of our 2024-2025 Advocacy Report, our Chair, Sampsa Auvinen, addresses the question of the forest carbon sink, clarifies misconceptions, and explains why sustainable management combined with long-lived wood products leads to more carbon stored overall. He reminds us of an essential point: substitution and storage must always be communicated together.

For decades, the European woodworking and sawmill industries have operated in the context of a European forest that has been year on year increasing the amount of car-bon it stores. As we seek to address climate change this has been good news. It has also helped us to address criticisms of commercial forestry as clearly timber is being removed from our forests in a sustainable way such that the forest’s ability to function as a carbon sink has not been adversely impacted – a win-win.

Recently, Europe’s forests have had a difficult few years resulting in some countries for some years reporting that their forests have been carbon emitters not carbon sinks. This news has been seized on by some to argue for an end to, or a significant reduction of, timber harvesting.

One of the main reasons these forest emissions have happened is the drought in 2018 and the subsequent reduction in forest growth and bark beetle infestations in certain areas. For some affected countries, like Germany, the outlook modelling shows that they will return to being a sink in the coming years and decades but at a lower level than before as there is a shift from planting previous coniferous tree species that are fast growing to more deciduous trees that grow more slowly. Some other regions were affected by unusually intense forest fire.

In response to this situation, we need to communicate that it is simply not true that the European forest is now a source of carbon emissions. This is only true for some countries for some years. At the EU level the forests are still an annual net sink. In 2023, the sink was even bigger than in 2022.

As we make this point, we must at the same time redouble our efforts to conclusively win the argument as to why felling trees sustainably and using wood as a substitute for more carbon-intensive materials can be good for the climate.

Carbon storage in Harvested Wood Products (HWPs) is needed for Europe to reach its carbon reduction targets. This argument has always been difficult to make because it is a paradox. Surely felling trees reduces, not increases, the amount of carbon stored? This would be the case if one hundred per cent of the timber generated by harvesting was immediately burnt, as the burning would release all the stored carbon. However, a large percentage has always made its way into HWPs, e.g. the timber used to construct homes, recognised under the LULUCF legislation as long term carbon storage.

The paradox is revealed when the sum of the carbon stored in a commercial forest, after a series of sustainable forest rotations (planting, felling, replanting) have been made, is added to the sum of the carbon stored in the HWPs that have been made with the timber harvested from the same forest. The resulting figure will be greater than the amount of carbon stored in the forest if it had never produced any timber and had been left unmanaged.

At the same time managing forests for timber production results in better structured forests, including the opportunity of planting more resilient species in anticipation of climate change.

The amount of time it takes for the harvested forest to store more carbon when combined with the HWPs it has produced is linked to the percentage of timber from each harvest that is used to manufacture HWPs - the greater the percentage the quicker, the smaller percentage the slower. We can therefore say with confidence that the climate science backs more timber in more buildings if our goal is to store more carbon.

Consequently, our advocacy work for the year ahead will need to have at its heart the climate benefits of timber’s ability to substitute for carbon intensive alternatives and timber’s ability to store carbon in the built environment. In so doing, we need to remind ourselves that we should never mention one without the other, substitution and storage should always come as a pair.

In making our arguments, we will be doing so in an EU environment which for the first time in the EU’s history has taken on board the issue of housing. This is both a threat and an opportunity.

It is a threat because while the emerging strategy to address Europe’s housing crisis will include a push to build significantly more homes, there is no guarantee that this will mean a greater use of wood. Why? Because large parts of the Commission continue to talk about ‘material neutrality’, including the staff in the newly formed Housing Task Force. Meanwhile in the Parliament, where 50 per cent of the MEPs following the election in 2024 are new, there is a low level of understanding that the dominant construction materials we currently use are a major cause of climate breakdown.

It is however also an opportunity for, if we can win the necessary arguments, including the central point that the climate and housing crises are ‘joined at the hip’ and best ad-dressed together, then we could find that timber is at long last recognised as the number one climate friendly construction material. A material which can be deployed in such a way that every house that is built to help address the housing crisis is - because of the timber it contains - another contribution to tackling climate breakdown.

By making links between this opportunity and the New European Bauhaus, with its em-phasis on sustainability, and with the latest bioeconomy strategy, with its emphasis on mobilising Europe’s biological resources to substitute fossil-based materials, then we can help convey the message that more timber in more buildings can deliver multiple policy wins.

All this take places against the backdrop of a Commission and Parliament that are seeking to improve Europe’s competitiveness in relation to the wider world while at the same time maintaining the strong social dimension that has always existed in the EU’s DNA. In so doing, they seek to ensure Europe’s workforce has good quality jobs: a state of affairs that Europe’s woodworking and sawmills industries have always supported and helped deliver for their own workforces.

Alas I must mention the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). In future, EUDR will be cited as a prime example of ‘the law of unintended consequences’. No piece of legislation put forward by the EU has ever taken up so much of our members’ time and caused so much work, disruption and uncertainty. This has been a serious issue especially when the industry is going through very challenging times as the construction activity have slowed down and demand for the industry´s products is low. Hopefully, 2026 will deliver clarity and an injection of common sense resulting in us all being able to move forward.

To end on a positive note, while it is true that the economic conditions in most European countries are not yet in place to enable growth in the construction sector, the general view is that 2026 will see an improvement especially if we embrace a more confident outlook. The deployment at the heart of Europe of Germany’s €500billion budget for infrastructure and climate neutrality will stimulate economic activity well beyond Ger-many’s borders. The pent-up demand for housing across Europe once released can act as a significant driver of growth. In turn, if we can collectively and successfully deploy our combined substitution and storage arguments, in the context of timber’s ability to tackle climate breakdown and deliver sustainable housing, then we will find ourselves facing the welcome ‘problem’ of how to deliver this time next year on rapidly expanding order books.