Spatiotemporal Prediction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Rubber Wood Furniture Industry, Taking Hainan as the Case

Abstract

The rubber wood furniture industry chain, including planting and manufacturing subsystems, emits significant greenhouse gases (GHGs), meanwhile, has huge carbon emission reduction potential. However, quite few studies have taken the whole industry chain GHGs into consideration, especially assessing and modelling those from rubber tree planting to furniture manufacturing. We took the rubber wood furniture of Hainan province as the case, explored its whole life cycle GHGs from cradle-to-gate and predicted the potential GHGs from 2031 to 2062. This study is fully based on field survey and sampling data, including that of the rubber tree planting (40-year cycle) and furniture manufacturing. The results reveal: (1) Whole industry chain of rubber wood furniture emits 3.27×10⁶ kgCO₂-eq GHGs per 20,000t rubber logs consuming, where the planting accounts the most (88.20%). Transport and electricity consumption are the main GHGs sources of planting and manufacturing subsystems respectively; (2) The whole life-cycle GHGs of rubber wood furniture in 2023 of Hainan is 2.07×10⁷ kgCO₂-eq, which mainly come from Danzhou (24.74%), Haikou (19.55%), and Qiongzhong (15.79%); (3) The total GHGs from the rubber wood furniture industry in Hainan from 2031 to 2062 are 210 MtCO₂-eq and 129 MtCO₂-eq respectively, without or with felling restriction. The changes of GHGs from 2051 to 2062 are caused by the regional center shift of planting gravity; (4) Improving energy use efficiency and optimizing the location of furniture factories would reduce GHGs. This study can provide empirical support for the low carbon sustainable transformation of the rubber wood furniture industry worldwide.