SCA’s climate benefits amount to 9.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum, which is more than the total emissions from all the truck traffic and domestic air travel in Sweden. Now we set a new goal and increase our climate benefit from 10 to 15 million tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2030 (base year 2019). The long-term goal is a fossil-free value chain. By 2030, we have set the goal of halving fossil emissions in the value chain.
In SCA's forests, the growing forest increases, in fact, significantly more than if we did not use it. Our forest grows an average of 5.2 million forest cubic meters per year. Of this, 1.3 million cubic meters are felled. 1.3 million cubic meters are lost through natural losses, such as storm precipitation, insect infestation and thinning. Remaining is an annual net growth of 4.0 million cubic meters.
There are other values that require consideration. Every fifth tree in SCA's forests may die a natural death and become food for insects, woodpeckers and wood fungi, to preserve the biodiversity of the forest, at SCA's own initiative and expense.
SCA's forests benefit the climate in several ways. Only because trees grow and bind carbon dioxide and growing forests bind more carbon dioxide than mature forest. SCA actively manages the forests and has a young and vital forest with high growth. Then by the same tree becoming products that can replace those with a larger carbon footprint, such as paper instead of plastic and biofuels instead of fossil fuels. Then oil and coal can remain permanently underground and society's total climate impact decreases.
SCA reports climate impact
SCA is for the first time reporting the company’s impact on the climate as part of its Annual Report, to be published on February 27. At a seminar in Stockholm, SCA reported the positive effect on the climate from forest growth and substitution, as well as the climate impact of its operations. During a seminar at the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry on Monday, February 25, SCA reported the climate effect of its operations. The calculations are presented in detail in a report by Peter Holmgren, a consultant and former head of CIFOR, an international organization for forest research, and SCA’s previous Sustainability Director Katarina Kolar. The model encompasses the carbon sequestration that occurs in SCA’s growing forests, all emissions of fossil carbon dioxide from SCA’s entire value.