U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visit to Maine last week came at a critical time for the future of our forests, our climate and our local bioeconomy.
Looking to build markets and supply chains for climate-friendly forest products, the Biden administration just announced $418,420 for Maine’s Timber HP GO Lab to produce sustainable wood insulation. And the USDA’s Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities is aiming even higher, working with the New England Forestry Foundation to help the first commercial landowners pilot climate-smart forestry management on their working lands.
Six landowners – Robbins Lumber Company, Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, The Baskahegan Company, Fallen Timber, Clayton Lake Woodlands and Seven Islands Land Company – will receive incentives that support a range of climate-smart forestry practices designed to increase carbon in the forest and in resulting wood products. Our goal is to show how owners of working lands can increase carbon storage while continuing to harvest climate-smart wood products and maintain revenues.
We estimate that the acres enrolled in the first round of the Commercial Landowner Incentive Program have the potential to store an additional 250,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent as compared to current practices. These results will be tested and determined based on modeling that will be a key part of the project. This initial directional estimate shows that, over the coming decades, this additional carbon storage could offset the amount of carbon emitted from the energy used annually to heat and cool 23,000 homes.
Unleashing the massive powerhouse of natural carbon storage via climate-smart forest management holds enormous potential across New England. If we manage our forests to climate and ecological standards, our research shows forests could deliver 30% of the carbon emissions reductions we need to meet our region’s net-zero goals and be a key input to a growing, sustainable bioeconomy.
This effort must be comprehensive and it must be region-wide. Realizing the carbon benefits of forests requires a systems approach, combining ecological and climate objectives. We need to stop net loss of forests, conserve important wildlands and wilderness areas, spread the adoption of climate-smart forestry and expand our bioeconomy by using wood and other natural materials to replace carbon-intensive steel and concrete. All told, NEFF’s analysis shows these steps could pull more than 646 million metric tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere over the next 30 years, nearly one-third of the total energy-related carbon emissions we need to eliminate to meet 2050 climate goals.
A key part of this transition will be growing the market for low-carbon wood products in the building and construction sector, which accounts for 37% of global emissions. Today, we build most of our multifamily homes and office buildings with steel and concrete, two carbon-intensive products. But development of new wood-based mass timber technologies has made it possible to build new tall wood buildings that use less carbon to build and can actually store the carbon in wood products for as long as they stand.
We can produce climate-smart wood to maximize carbon sequestration and storage, protect biodiversity and produce climate-smart wood products. Climate-smart forest management can help our forests grow more valuable trees which store more carbon while being more resilient to the impacts of climate change. And, by sourcing our wood locally, we can grow our local bioeconomy to benefit our local communities.
If we manage our forests with an eye to climate as well as biodiversity, we can unleash powerful natural climate solutions right here in Maine that help our rural communities, our forests and our global climate.