Timing the climate cost of boreal bioenergy: a 2011 forest model
In a 2011 paper, three NTNU researchers modelled how managing a boreal forest stand changes the warming caused by burning its wood. A 2019 Greenpeace Sweden article cites it against the idea that logging boreal forest is carbon neutral.
What the study did and found
The paper “Effects of boreal forest management practices on the climate impact of CO2 emissions from bioenergy” appeared in Ecological Modelling in 2011 (Cherubini et al., 2011). Its authors, Francesco Cherubini, Anders H. Strømman and Edgar Hertwich, were at NTNU in Trondheim.
The authors questioned the convention of scoring CO2 from burning biomass as climate neutral whenever regrowth absorbs the same amount, arguing that forests return the CO2 only over decades. Using one boreal stand under regimes that changed growth rate and harvest age, they found that these choices shift the warming factor GWPbio and that the time horizon plays a key role (Cherubini et al., 2011).
Why it is cited
The referring page is a July 2019 Greenpeace Sweden article on forestry and climate. In an English note in its source list, the link on “Cherubini et al. 2011” supports the claim that boreal industrial logging is not carbon neutral, partly because regrowth takes so long.
The time lag matches the paper, but the wider verdict goes further, since the model followed one stand through one harvest, and the note leaves out the paper’s other half: counting biogenic CO2 exactly like fossil CO2 can overstate the impact.
Later papers report that the model assumed idealised regrowth after all above-ground biomass is harvested, and Bjart Holtsmark says it found GWPbio values well below 1 over 100 years (Holtsmark, 2015).
Later work widened the frame: Holtsmark added soil carbon and an uncut-forest baseline and found GWPbio two to three times higher (Holtsmark, 2015), while Repo and colleagues found that boreal residue bioenergy warmed the climate for at least 62 years in every scenario (Repo et al., 2015).
The topic today
Under IPCC inventory guidance, bioenergy CO2 is reported in the land sector, which the IPCC says is no judgement on carbon neutrality. The EU’s 2023 Renewable Energy Directive bars direct support for burning saw logs and stumps, and a 2026 review puts carbon-debt payback anywhere from a few years to over a century (Rummukainen, 2026).
For the current picture, see our explainer Is Burning Boreal Wood Carbon Neutral? What a 2011 Model Showed.