The role of forests in the EU climate policy: are we on the right track?

Abstract

Background The European Union (EU) has committed to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. This requires a rapid reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and ensuring that any remaining emissions are balanced through CO2 removals. Forests play a crucial role in this plan: they are currently the main option for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and additionally, wood use can store carbon durably and help reduce fossil emissions. To stop and reverse the decline of the forest carbon sink, the EU has recently revised the regulation on land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), and set a target of − 310 Mt CO2e net removals for the LULUCF sector in 2030. Results In this study, we clarify the role of common concepts in forest management – net annual increment, harvest and mortality – in determining the forest sink. We then evaluate to what extent the forest sink is on track to meet the climate goals of the EU. For this assessment we use data from the latest national GHG inventories and a forest model (Carbon Budget Model). Our findings indicate that on the EU level, the recent decrease in increment and the increase in harvest and mortality are causing a rapid drop in the forest sink. Furthermore, continuing the past forest management practices is projected to further decrease the sink. Finally, we discuss options for enhancing the sinks through forest management while taking into account adaptation and resilience. Conclusions Our findings show that the EU forest sink is quickly developing away from the EU climate targets. Stopping and reversing this trend requires rapid implementation of climate-smart forest management, with improved and more timely monitoring of GHG fluxes. This enhancement is crucial for tracking progress towards the EU’s climate targets, where the role of forests has become – and is expected to remain – more prominent than ever before.

European Climate Policy in the Context of the Problem of Methane Emissions from Coal Mines in Poland

“…The findings of this paper shed light on the multifaceted challenges and potential avenues for mitigating methane emissions from coal mines, with a particular emphasis on the European Union's climate policy objectives [8][9][10][11]91,92]. The identified issues align with existing theoretical frameworks related to environmental sustainability, technology adoption, and policy implementation.…”

“…Methane has a higher warming potential than carbon dioxide in the short term, making its capture an important aspect of the EU's broader strategy to combat climate change. The EU has established regulations and directives to address methane emissions, and these policies encourage the adoption of technologies and practices that capture methane from various sources, including coal mines [10][11][12]. Companies operating within the EU are subject to stringent environmental standards and regulations, creating a regulatory environment that promotes the implementation of methane capture technologies [13,14].…”

Carbon and greenhouse gas budgets of Europe: trends, interannual and spatial variability, and their drivers

“…Recent studies have shown an increase in forest vulnerability to such disturbances at European level (Forzieri et al, 2021) consistent with the observed widespread decline in forest resilience (Forzieri et al, 2022;Smith et al, 2022) and the reported intensification of forest damages associated to climate-driven events (Pattaca et al 2023). Emerging signs of C sink saturation and sink decline in European forest biomass have been associated to such increased disturbance regime (Nabuurs et al, 2013;Korosuo et al, 2023) which is expected to be further exacerbated by climate change (Seidl et al, 2014;Anderegg et al, 2022).…”

Bioenergy in Europe is unlikely to make a timely contribution to climate change targets

“…In recent years, the development of the EU's Regulation on Land, Land Use Change and Forestry has been particularly challenging, not least because of its implications for forestry and bioenergy [45]. Ambitious, nationally-binding targets for increased carbon removals via the land system, and proposals for the EU's Nature Restoration Law [46], make widespread land use change problematic, and may conflict especially with the Renewable Energy Directive's reliance on bioenergy [47,48].…”