The project in brief

WOODYN is a research project funded by ADEME which aims to develop a time-resolved environmental assessment of the French forest-wood sector, by coupling Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with dynamic Material Flow Analysis (MFA).

The project offers an integrated representation of carbon flows and stocks across the sector, from the forest through to end uses, in order to assess the environmental effects of wood mobilisation scenarios over time.

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Background and challenges

Climate change mitigation rests in part on maintaining the forest carbon sink and on developing wood products that substitute for fossil resources.

Rapidly rising demand for wood is, however, putting growing pressure on the forest resource. Carbon storage timescales differ markedly from one product to another: some release carbon quickly, at times faster than forests can sequester it.

Scaling up these uses also creates competition between sectors (energy, materials, packaging) whose lifetimes and climate impacts are very different. Silvicultural practices, finally, influence soil carbon stocks and interact with biodiversity.

Against this background, a time-resolved LCA covering the forest-wood sector as a whole is a major scientific and operational challenge.

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Objectives

The WOODYN project aims to develop a methodology for time-resolved LCA of the forest-wood sector at the scale of metropolitan France.

Its main objectives are to:

• Develop a dynamic representation of wood and carbon flows and stocks across the sector.
• Couple the theoretical foundations of dynamic MFA with LCA.
• Structure a unified model of the sector from existing data and models.
• Build the software tools that make this coupling possible.
• Assess forward-looking scenarios and analyse their environmental effects over time.

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How the project runs

The project is organised into six main work packages:

1. Project coordination and consortium management.
2. Introducing the time dimension into MFA, by bringing in new data from LCA and adapting reconciliation methods.
3. Extracting and restructuring LCA data for wood processing operations, to feed the MFA.
4. Translating dynamic MFA into LCA inventories and developing integrated software tools.
5. Building a dynamic climate change indicator, incorporating the mass and causal relationships of the sector.
6. Developing a methodological framework for a dynamic land use indicator, based on species richness and management practices.

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Expected results

The main expected results are:

• A set of open data, methods and programs for the time-resolved assessment of the forest-wood sector.
• The capacity to assess forward-looking scenarios for the sector.
• A theoretical framework for a dynamic land use indicator, capturing the interactions between forestry practices, climate and biodiversity.

These results should help climate policy and wood mobilisation strategies to take temporal effects better into account.

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Application and outreach

The project plans:

• A case study based on existing forest-wood sector scenarios.
• Open dissemination of the data and tools developed.
• Scientific publications and conference presentations.
• Webinars, to help sector stakeholders take up the methods.

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General information

• Coordinator: Université Gustave Eiffel
• Partners: INRIA, FCBA, TerriFlux, CSTB, IFPEN
• Duration: 4 years
• Start: June 2025
• Location: France

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To go further

• The BACCFIRE project final report (ADEME library, 2026) (in French) — the project on the carbon balance of the forest-wood sector that WooDyn builds upon.
• The GPEM laboratory (Université Gustave Eiffel) — the laboratory coordinating the project.
• The STEEP team (Inria) — project partner for material flow analysis.
• Published diagrams — the first dynamic MFA building blocks presented to the steering committee.