Browsing by Author "Mattila, Kaarle"

Cost-effective mitigation of climate change is essential for climate policy. Forest rotation age is a silvicultural measure by which forest carbon stocks can be influenced with in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol, Article 3.4. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how lengthening the forest rotation periods would affect the profitability of forestry and carbon sequestration. The discounted net revenues of the forest owner’s economical optimal (Faustmann’s rotation model) were compared with 10 and 20 years longer rotation periods, where the additional carbon dioxide sequestrated was compensated with prices 20 € and 50 € per ton of CO2. All calculations were made with a 2 % and a 4 % interest rate. Ten test sites were selected from a list of forest stands in Eastern-Finland, 5 of which were Norway spruce stands and 5 were Scots pine stands. The forest growth of these stands was simulated with Motti-simulator, a software developed by Metsäntutkimuslaitos (METLA) to estimate tree growth at forest stand levels. The results indicate, that lengthening the rotation period increases the carbon stocks of forests. The additional carbon dioxide sequestrated obeys the rule of decreasing marginal utility, so that the increment is greater for the first 10 years than the following 10 years lengthening of lengthening. The unit costs for carbon sequestration were between 2.3 – 18.1 (€/ton of CO2) for Norway spruce and 0.2 – 15.9 for Scots pine. However, the carbon sequestration was by average higher and more cost-efficient for Norway spruces than for Scots pines. The discounted net revenues of the forest owner increased in almost every case, which implies that the carbon sequestration is profitable in the right circumstances. The incompleteness of carbon trading is an obstacle for the commercialization of forest carbon sequestration. In the future, more research data is required to enable a more efficient execution for the forest carbon sequestration markets.