Global estimation of the climate change impact of logging residue utilization for biofuels

Abstract The requirements of climate change mitigation and energy security have led to increased interest in biomass from researchers and policymakers. Available logging residues are an important biomass source, and the climate change impact of their utilization for bioenergy needs to be estimated. In this study, we used the Global Forest Resources Assessments 2015 database to assess the available logging residues and applied an integrated method to analyze the climate change impact of converting logging residues to ethanol and biodiesel. The integrated method included the climate change impacts from: (1) fossil fuel-derived GHG emissions, (2) biomass-derived CO2 emissions, (3) biomass regrowth for compensation (4) land-use practice change, and (5) difference in carbon sequestration. We found that the globally available logging residues were 192.9 dry Tg under a less intensive removal scenario (25% of logging residues) and 540.0 dry Tg under a more intensive removal scenario (70% of logging residues). Large countries usually had high availabilities of logging residues. When the residues were used to produce ethanol or biodiesel, the global climate change impacts ranged from −139.5 to −488.4 Tg CO2 eq. Therefore, the reductions of CO2 emissions were from 292.7 to 864.2 Tg CO2 eq. The global total emission reduction when calculated by applying the integrated method was higher than those from the conventional and biogenic methods. The integrated method could provide more supportive theoretical bases for biomass utilization.