Tom Erik Thorkildsen, Eirik Ogner Jåstad, Per Kristian Rørstad, Erik Trømborg. (2026). Forest sector impacts from increased reutilization of post-consumer wood in the Nordic-Baltic region. Silva Fennica vol. 60 no. 3 article id 25005. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.25005

Keywords: circular economy; forest sector modeling; harvest leakage; reclaimed wood; recycling targets; wood waste

Highlights: Wood reutilization strongly promotes particleboard production and harvest-residue use; Because of leakage effects, multilateral wood-reutilization policy is far more efficient than unilateral policy in reducing domestic roundwood harvesting; As wood reutilization increases, harvest-residue use rises by about twice the reduction in roundwood harvest, measured in solid cubic meters.

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Global roundwood harvests are projected to increase by 49 percent by 2050, and can negatively affect carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and essential ecosystem services. Employing a circular cascading strategy for wood resources may increase the carbon stock accumulated in wood products and reduce harvest. This study investigates a) how reutilizing 30, 50, and 70 percent of generated post-consumer wood by weight will affect the Nordic-Baltic forest sector, and b) the difference between adopting unilateral Norwegian and multilateral Nordic-Baltic wood reutilization policies. We apply the Nordic Forest Sector Model, a spatial partial equilibrium model, which includes 37 assorted forest products, and make a novel extension by including reutilized wood products. The model calculates hypothetical harvest and production volumes as well as prices when each country is forced to meet the selected reutilization targets based on constrained welfare maximization. The results show that reutilization of wood promotes increased particleboard production, mainly in the Baltics, and increased utilization of harvest residues, foremost in Sweden and Finland, to maintain bioheat production. In the Nordic-Baltic area, between 0.42 and 0.73 cubic meters of roundwood would be saved for every cubic meter of wood reutilized, while the corresponding rates for Norway are 0.26 to 0.36. Due to leakage effects, unilateral Norwegian policies result in domestic roundwood reduction to reutilization rates as low as 0.03 to 0.05. This implies that it is vital to coordinate policies with adjacent countries to reduce leakage if the objective of wood reutilization is to reduce domestic extraction of roundwood.

Thorkildsen, Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Ås, Norway https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7221-698X E-mail: tom.erik.thorkildsen@nmbu.no
Jåstad, Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Ås, Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1089-0284 E-mail: eirik.jastad@nmbu.no
Rørstad, Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Ås, Norway E-mail: per.kristian.rorstad@nmbu.no
Trømborg, Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Ås, Norway E-mail: erik.tromborg@nmbu.no

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