Monitoring energy efficiency and environmental impact of the woodworking industry in Germany

The forest wood chain is affected by the current policy framework in context with environmental and energy related issues in many ways. But since policy instruments interfere with certain parts of the forest-wood chain separately, there is no holistic monitoring installed which follows the development of the complete chain. Especially the development of environmental aspects of the production of wood products is a rather black spot. To include the environmental impact of the woodworking industry within long term evaluations of political decision taken today, the monitoring approach which combines comprehensive life cyle inventory data on product level wit historical data on sector level. Reliable results were derived for some energy indicators and cradle to gate greenhouse gas emissions. Data gaps were identified for several other indicators and quality problems were identified in context with the final energy demand reported on sector level. The results show that between 2003 and 2011 the sawmill industry increased its average greenhouse gas emissions from 34.8 to 39.7 kg CO2-Eq./m3 while the panel industry decreased it from 353 to 319 kg CO2-Eq./m3. A comparison of the findings with displacement factors for wood products substitution was conducted to understand the relevance of the results. It showed that the development of environmental aspects of the woodworking industry need to be taken into account for long term evaluations of political decision affecting the forest wood chain.