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Abstract
Sustainability issues about wood fuels are increasingly being debated, but the European Union has decided not to impose EU-wide sustainability criteria for solid biomass. United Kingdom energy companies plan massive increases in their utilization of wood energy, further fuelling European demand for wood energy. In order to increase control of the value chain, European energy companies are investing in large-scale wood pellet production facilities, particularly in North America. Wood energy use and pellet production levels are increasing in the Russian Federation, despite the overall regression of the Russian forest sector up to 2010. Russian federal and regional governments are actively implementing policies on energy efficiency and renewable energy supply, increasing wood energy use and production. The United States has suddenly become the world’s leading producer of wood pellets through the construction of a number of the world’s largest pellet plants. The US Biomass Conversion Assistance Program introduced in 2008 as a tool to promote the use of wood residues for energy purposes has been put on hold in 2010 due to high costs and fears that it causes market distortion. The large export-oriented Canadian wood pellet industry is evolving with increased utilization of non-traditional raw materials (i.e. not sawmill co-products) and growing domestic pellet demand. Although federal policy measures about wood energy are largely absent in Canada, provincial governments are becoming increasingly proactive in promoting bio-energy market development.
Keywords
Forest products industry,
marketing,
forest products,
Europe,
economic aspects,
sustainable forestry,
market surveys,
consumption,
supply,
demand,
renewable natural resources,
forest biomass,
utilization,
natural resources,
biotechnology,
renewable energy sources,
synthetic fuels,
fuelwood,
biomass energy,
alcohol,
energy conservation,
biomass utilization,
energy consumption,
energy industries,
biomass conversion,
renewable natural resources,
forest resources,
bioconversion,
ethanol,
biorefining,
biomass fuel,
chemical utilization,
wood as fuel,
wood extractives
Citation
Olsson, Olle; Hillring, Bengt; Hartkamp, Rens; Skog, Kenneth; Spelter, Henry; Aguilar, Francisco; Mabee, Warren; Gaston, Christopher; Wahl, Antje. 2010. Government policies increasingly promote renewable energy sources : wood energy markets in the UNECE region, 2009-2010. In: Forest products annual market review, 2009-2010: Chapter 9. Geneva timber and forest study papers ; no. 25. Geneva, Switzerland : United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Forestry and Timber Section, 2010: p. 99-112: ISBN: 9789211170276: 9211170273.
