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The objective of this paper is to analyse role of forest industry in meeting energy and climate targets that aim to mitigating global change. Finland as an important forest industry country with the ambitious target of becoming carbon neutral by 2035 is selected to a target county. This study aims to present a plausible assessment of the future of the Finnish forest industry until 2035 based on literature and a scenario building approach. The focus is on energy use and fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The results suggest that electricity consumption will decrease, whereas electricity production will increase, which indicates that forest industry can provide more renewable electricity to the grid. Heat consumption may even increase as a result from building new biorefineries, but those mills can most probably meet their heat demand by combusting biofuels. Changes in forest industry’s direct fossil CO2 emissions can reduce Finnish fossil CO2 emissions 2─4% in comparison to 2018. Biofuels production is likely to rise, but the extent remains to be seen. It is concluded that the Finnish forest industry can contribute significantly to meeting national climate policy targets, and forest industry in general can play a role in mitigating global change. Additionally, it was found that development of the Finnish forest industry will probably be limited by the requirement for sustainable wood harvesting, which may also be a problem for other forest industry countries.

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Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is one of the key negative emission technologies (NETs). Large-scale implementation of BECCS has been criticized of the associated increase in land use. The existing large Nordic pulp and paper production units enable BECCS deployment without additional land use, as they currently release large amounts of bio-based carbon dioxide (CO2). The application of BECCS in pulp mills has been found technically feasible in earlier studies. This study explores key factors that affect the propensity to invest in BECCS in different types of existing European pulp and paper mills. The results give fresh understanding on the effects of BECCS on the market price of pulp and paper products and the required level of incentives. Based on statistical data, the marginal carbon dioxide credit (€ per ton CO2) to make BECCS profitable was derived. The results show that the required level of credit greatly depends on the mill type and details and that the feasibility of BECCS does not clearly correlate with the economic performance or the measured efficiency of the mill. The most promising mill type, a market kraft pulp mill, would find BECCS profitable with a credit in the range of 62–70 €/tCO2 and a credit of 80 €/tCO2 would decrease pulp production costs by 15 €/tproduct on average if 50% of CO2 emissions was captured. The EU Emission Trading System (ETS) is the main policy instrument to achieve the climate targets related to fossil energy use, but does not yet contemplate bio-based emissions.