Projecting Landscape Forest Carbon Emissions from Changes in Forest Biomass Electricity Generation and Forest Products Markets from 2014 to 2035: An Analysis in Minnesota, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington

Excerpts from the Introduction: This report consists of seven chapters. Chapter 2 provides the national context for the state chapters that follow. The five state chapters are designed so that they can be extracted from the report and function as standalone documents for audiences interested in a particular state. For this purpose, background and appendix information is repeated in each chapter. All the chapters follow a template that, after an Executive Summary and Introduction, provide an overview of the corresponding state’s energy and forest sectors using US Energy Information Agency (EIA) and USDA Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data, respectively. The chapters then provide information on model parameters, inputs, and modeled scenarios before discussing scenario results. Changes in forest products markets were modeled as a result of changes in forest biomass electricity generation, which results in a change in landscape forest carbon emissions. Forest products markets and carbon emissions were projected using one of two models, depending on the state. Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington scenarios were developed in consultation with state forest and regulatory agencies and analyses performed using the Land Use and Resource Allocation (LURA) model. South Carolina and Virginian scenarios were developed in a similar manner, and analyses were performed using the SubRegional Timber Supply (SRTS) model.