The new rules for the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry sector under the Kyoto Protocol recognized the importance of Harvested Wood Products (HWP) in climate change mitigation. The researchers used the Tier 2 method proposed in the 2013 IPCC KP Supplement to estimate emissions and removals from HWP from 1990 to 2030 in EU-28 countries with three future harvest scenarios (constant historical average, and +/−20% in 2030). Results For the historical period (2000–2012) the results are consistent with other studies, indicating a HWP sink equal on average to −44.0 Mt CO2 yr−1 (about 10% of the sink by forest pools). Assuming a constant historical harvest scenario and future distribution of the total harvest among each commodity, the HWP sink decreases to −22.9 Mt CO2 yr−1 in 2030. The increasing and decreasing harvest scenarios produced a HWP sink of −43.2 and −9.0 Mt CO2 yr−1 in 2030, respectively. Other factors may play an important role on HWP sink, including: (i) the relative share of different wood products, and (ii) the combined effect of production, import and export on the domestic production of each commodity.

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