Jiaxin Chen

Title : From carbon neutral to climate neutral: dynamic life cycle assessment for wood-based panels produced in china

Abstract:

The forestry sector (managed forests and wood products produced from harvesting these forests) is crucial in supporting climate change mitigation, where the mitigation potential is assessed by combining forest carbon analysis and wood product life cycle assessment (LCA). Static LCA (sLCA) is the approach commonly used in national forestry mitigation models worldwide. Static greenhouse gas (GHG) effects are calculated as a running total of emissions and removals, which are often used to imply climate effects. And carbon neutrality, a state when the GHG effects equal zero, is used to imply neutral climate effects. However, until carbon neutrality is achieved, the increased emissions contribute to climate warming. Dynamic LCA (dLCA) is an improved method to estimate climate effects by considering the atmospheric dynamics and heat trapping capacity of different GHGs. Climate neutrality is a state when the warming effects caused by increased emissions are fully compensated by warming reduction contributed by removals.

We applied dLCA and sLCA to China-made wood-based panels produced from 1990 to 2018 by harvesting poplar plantations. Our results suggested that, compared to dLCA results, static GHG effects largely underestimated climate warming effects or overestimated mitigation contributions. And decades or longer was required to achieve climate neutrality following carbon neutrality, if achievable. So, within a given timeframe, a forestry mitigation activity can achieve carbon neutrality but increase climate warming, hindering the goal of limiting global temperature rise that was set in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Thus, to assess climate warming effects, using dLCA in addition to GHG effects is essential for forestry mitigation analysis.

Biography:

Dr. Jiaxin Chen studied at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China and graduated as a research student in 1987. He then Joined the Central South University as a lecturer until 1996, when he worked at Aalborg University as a visiting scholar. In 1998, he went to Leeds Beckett University, Great Britain, and received his PhD in 2001. In 2002, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada. He joined the Ontario Forest Research Institute as a research scientist since 2003, working in the area of forest carbon modelling, wood product life cycle assessment, and forestry mitigation analysis. He has published more than 50 research articles in SCI journals.