Carbon Losses Due to Wood Harvesting and the Role of Wood Products - The Greenhouse Gas Balance of Italy - page 106

CO 2 ). This method tends to limit the possibility of properly accounting carbon sinks
in those countries where, like Italy, timber is imported to produce furniture and other
finished wood products which are then exported abroad.
Moreover, a contrast of the stock change approach versus the production
approach resulted in very different figures in the landfills carbon stock estimation
(49 % of the total against 63 % respectively).
At the moment carbon stock estimations in Italy are based on assumptions and
data that should be better tested, also in light of the poor quality of the above men-
tioned statistics on wood harvesting (Corona et al. 2004 ) and imports of timber in
Italy (Pettenella and Ciccarese 2009 ).
On the basis of the experience carried out by Kloehn and Ciccarese ( 2005 ), the
inclusion of forest products in the national GHGs accounting system could dra-
matically affect the final Italian balance depending on the adopted accounting
method.
However, at the moment, as clearly demonstrated by Hashimoto ( 2008 ), none
of the accounting approaches can provide incentives which are consistent and
compatible with the overall objectives of forest and environmental policies such
as the promotion of forest conservation, promotion of energy use of wood, promo-
tion of material use of wood, promotion of recovery of wood. The best approach
in order to achieve each policy goal actually varies, and the best approaches for
specific policy goals might present problems for others.
7.3.2 Improvement of Wood Products Uses
Wood is an excellent construction material because of its physical characteristics.
It is a low density material with a high carrying capacity, as well as a high thermic
and acoustic efficiency, very suitable for constructions in seismic areas for its high
energy dissipation capacity. Moreover, wood is a renewable material requiring
limited external energy to be produced and transformed. It can therefore be used
in place of many other materials whose production require a much higher level of
energy, such as iron and aluminum, thereby reducing emissions of GHGs (FAO
2010b ). It is therefore relevant to identify practical solutions and valuable tech-
niques to increase the use of wood in domestic and industrial applications replac-
ing other materials.
Some studies related to the energy required to build up constructions with
different combinations of materials suggest that maximizing the use of wood in
new buildings could reduce in a significant way GHGs emissions generated in
the production of building materials (Skog and Nicholson 1998 ). For example,
the energy needed for the production of an iron beam exceeds up to nine times
the energy needed to produce a wood product with the same length and carrying
capacity (Burschel and Kürsten 1992 ). Gustavsson et al. ( 2006 ), comparing two
multi-storey buildings, one made of wood and the other of concrete, show that the
CO 2 emissions for the construction with wood were significantly lower than those