Integrated timber investment returns, wood fiber stumpage costs, and forest carbon costs for global planted forests, 2023

Abstract

This article summarizes our research on integrated timber investment returns, wood stumpage costs, and forest carbon production costs in 2023 for a representative selection of 15 countries, across 44 planted and 1 natural species/management regimes, using capital budgeting criteria, at a real discount rate of 8%, without land costs. Despite a large amount of disparate research, few, if any, studies have provided integrated estimates of investments, wood fiber costs, and forest carbon costs for CO₂ offsets using fundamental primary data and production economics approaches. We expanded our prior research that estimated present values and internal rates of return for timber investments, using planted forest growth and yield, input management costs, and timber products prices by selected countries and species. We extended the production economics and forest investment calculations to estimate average stumpage costs for wood fiber per cubic meter per rotation. In addition, we calculated the costs to produce forest carbon for offsets in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent. Timber investment returns by country and species were the largest in tropical Asia and smallest in the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States and Europe), and South America had calculated returns between the two regions. Based on prior research, more developed countries had less investment risk, and had land markets that were more open for foreign investments. Wood costs and forest carbon production cost outcomes by country and species differed substantially from timber investment returns. The discounted wood costs per m3 were generally cheapest if the establishment costs and management inputs were minimized, or for long rotation planted stands. Forest carbon  costs had similar rankings to wood costs, and even similar numbers, but were using a different metric—dollars per tCO2e. The calculated forest carbon costs are certainly among the cheapest of all types of typical carbon offsets. They were equal to or much less than the six primary developed country compliance market prices.  However, they were higher than the current depressed public voluntary market prices. These results can be used for private, government, or nongovernment investments and for public policy intervention considerations.