Wood composite panels (WCP) are well known for their environmentally friendly attributes of being sustainable, renewable, biodegradable, and predominantly made from wood residues generated during lumber and plywood production. This paper focuses on the ability of WCPs to store carbon for long periods of time in nonstructural applications such as cabinets, furniture, and flooring. WCPs, include particleboard, medium density fiberboard (MDF), and hardboard\u2013engineered wood siding and trim (EWST). These panels are anticipated to have an average service life of 25\u201330 years. In 2019, there was an estimated 291 million cubic meters (m3) of WCPs in use in North America that corresponds to a carbon pool of 354 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. This WCP carbon pool is enough to offset 24 years of cradle-to-gate cumulative carbon emissions (fossil and biogenic sources) emitted during production of these panels. In other words, producing and using WCPs stores carbon for long periods because the amount of carbon emitted during the production of the panels is far less than what the panels themselves are capable of storing over their lifetime of product use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Demand for sustainable \u201cgreen\u201d products, desired for their favorable environmental performance, is increasing in the marketplace. Recent life cycle assessment (LCA) studies document the environmental performance of composite panels (Puettmann and Salazar 2018, 2019; Puettmann et al. 2016). Wood products (in use and landfills) store 9,786 million metric tons (mt) of carbon dioxide (as CO2e; Desai. and Camobreco 2020) representing two (2) times the amount of carbon stored in forests in United States (US) National Parks (Smith et al. 2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When round-shaped logs are processed into rectangular boards at sawmills, coproducts in the form of bark, hogged fuel, sawdust, shavings, and chips are generated. These coproducts may be used for heat energy onsite at the facilities, used in pulp and paper production, or in the manufacturing of wood composite panels (WCPs). WCPs represent 3.2 percent of the total harvested wood volume in the United States (Oswalt et al. 2019). In 2016, wood processing facilities in the United States generated 58 million mt (dry) of residues (Oswalt et al. 2019). These residues were primarily used for fuel (46%) and fiber products (38%) including WCPs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US softwood lumber industry produces an estimated 19 million mt per year of residue coproduct, which represents over half of the log mass entering sawmills (Milota and Puettmann 2017). Recent surveys indicate that softwood lumber producers use about 3.8 million dry mt per year of coproduct for onsite energy consumption (Milota and Puettmann 2017). This self-generated biofuel not only comes at a low environmental and economic cost to wood producers but is a direct substitution of fossil fuels with a direct reduction in carbon emissions. Increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including the reduction of fossil fuel use, such as coal, have boosted interest in using wood residues from wood producing facilities to produce energy and transportation fuels (Kelley et al. 2019). The use of wood-based fuels reduces fossil-based carbon emissions, but the substitution may come with unintended consequences\u2014such as higher carbon emission than would occur if the wood residues were used in long-term products such as wood composite panels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Composite Panel Association (CPA) represents North American (NA) manufacturers of composite wood and fiber panels. The NA composite panel industry stores more than 14.8 million metric tons of carbon (CO2e) through the manufacture of panels each year. This is equivalent to carbon emissions for over 3.2 million cars (US Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The purpose of this study, commissioned by CPA, was to determine the net carbon impact of WCPs by measuring the total carbon storage (embedded carbon) and embodied carbon for the WCP products produced over an estimated service life of 25\u201330 years (the anticipated service life of panel products). The results present carbon pools and flows for particleboard, medium density fiberboard (MDF), and hardboard\u2013engineered wood siding and trim (EWST) manufacturing facilities located in North America (Mexico not included) for the production years 1996\u20132019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The principal raw material used in manufacturing WCPs is residual fiber sourced from forests, sawmills, and other wood processing …<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n