California's harvested wood products: A time-dependent assessment of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions

Khatri, Poonam; Nepal, Prakash; Sahoo, Kamalakanta; Bergman, Richard; Nicholls, David; Gray, Andrew

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163918

California's harvested wood products: A time-dependent assessment of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions

Journal Article · Mon May 08 00:00:00 EDT 2023 · Science of the Total Environment

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163918· OSTI ID:2425599

Khatri, Poonam ^[1]; Nepal, Prakash ^[1]; Sahoo, Kamalakanta ^[1]; Bergman, Richard ^[1]; Nicholls, David ^[2]; Gray, Andrew ^[3]

USDA Forest Service, Madison, WI (United States)
USDA Forest Service, Juneau, AK (United States)
USDA Forest Service, Corvallis, OR (United States)

Following life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, this study presents a state-level estimation of embodied carbon of wood products harvested in 2019 from California and subsequently processed, manufactured, transported, used, and disposed at the end-of-life (EoL). In a conventional static approach to LCA, all GHG emissions were aggregated and considered to occur at year 0 of the given time horizon (500 years in this study) and used a static characterization factor (CF). In dynamic LCA, GHG emissions occurring in different years were considered, and their global warming impact (GWI) was determined using a time-dependent CF over the selected time horizon of 500 years. Four scenarios were developed to examine the impact of EoL choices on GWI. It was found that dynamic GWI for all scenarios ranged from 0.27 to 0.93 million tonne CO₂e, which were 45–73 % lower than those estimated with static LCA approach, indicating that the static LCA approach could lead to an underestimation of the benefits of substituting wood for non-wood products, compared to those based on dynamic LCA approach. This analysis also demonstrated that the choice of EoL treatment option is a key factor affecting the estimated GWI as it directly determines the annual emission of GHGs released into atmosphere and subsequently their warming effect depending on the time harvested wood products (HWPs) spend in the horizon of assessment. Altogether, the dynamic LCA performed in this study enabled more robust interpretations of embodied carbon by including temporal boundaries associated with the HWPs life cycle.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0014664

OSTI ID:: 2425599

Journal Information:: Science of the Total Environment, Journal Name: Science of the Total Environment Journal Issue: C Vol. 886; ISSN 0048-9697

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
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Dynamic LCA
Embodied carbon
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
Harvested wood products
Life-cycle assessment (LCA)
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California's harvested wood products: A time-dependent assessment of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions

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