Impacts of forest bioenergy and policies on the forest sector markets in Europe - what do we know?

Technical Report 89

Author
Birger Solberg, Lauri Hetemäki, A. Maarit I. Kallio, Alexander Moiseyev, Hanne K.Sjølie
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The main political objectives of EU's renewable strategy are decreased use of fossil energy sources, reduced CO2 emissions and increased energy self sufficiency. Wood based bioenergy plays an important role in this strategy. The potential increase in wood demand for bioenergy production is of high interest for the EU forestry and forest industries due to its impacts on wood prices, profitability of forestry and forest industries, rural employment, recreation and forest ecology. In recent years, several studies have addressed the development of the wood demand for bioenergy, policies affecting it, and the above-mentioned impacts. To facilitate the use of the results by policy makers and other forest and energy sector stakeholders, a synthesis of the studies is in place. What are the policy relevant messages that come out of the studies, and what are the primary issues we lack science based information on? This report seeks addressing these questions, reviewing five recent studies that analyse renewable energy sources (RES) policy implications to forest industry and forest biomass markets with the focus on economic analyses of these implications. The objectives of the report are to summarize major results from these studies, discuss their main policy implications, and identify issues where further research seems most important. 

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Recommended citation:
Birger Solberg, Lauri Hetemäki, A. Maarit I. Kallio, Alexander Moiseyev and Hanne K.Sjølie. 2014. Impacts of forest bioenergy and policies on the forest sector markets in Europe - what do we know?. EFI Technical Report 89. European Forest Institute.

Number of pages: 86