Assessing hardwood flows from resource to production through Material Flow Analysis

Many doubts accompany both the resource potential of hardwoods and their softwood substituting potential within its material utilisation. However, as the feedstock demand will rise with more and more wood-based biorefineries entering the market, wood supply security is an increasingly pressing topic. Currently, hardwood flow models are lacking, but are an essential basis for estimating future hardwood supply security. This study investigates the actual hardwood flows in Germany by applying a Material Flow Analysis (MFA). Visualising the results of the MFA for the reference year 2016. The MFA displays 4.44 +/- 0.12 million m(3) (fob) recorded fellings in privately-owned forests, 8.60 +/- 0.15 million m(3) (fob) recorded fellings in state forests, 9.31 +/- 0.52 million m 3 (fob) as unrecorded harvest from forests (i.e. 37% of the total harvest) and 2.65 +/- 0.35 million m(3) (fob) unrecorded fellings from non-forest area (11% of total harvest). Of that, almost 30% were used for materials and 70% were used for energy. Consequently, the potential for material use of hardwood in Germany lies beyond its current usage, especially given that good qualities are being used for energy due to actual low material consumer demand. Thus, the MFA assessed the quality and quantity of the German hardwood potential and showed that it offers significant possibilities for value added usage options such as, for example, producing innovative products in biorefineries using degraded high-quality assortments. Due to the low data consistency, heterogeneous datasets for the forest and wood industry sector were calibrated through data reconciliation and error propagation. Additionally, the lack of statistical data for specific wood industry sectors raised a problem, for instance, actual data on private combustion of wood, established hardwood uses, or new innovative products. Severe data issues regarding the German hardwood flow were confirmed.