How climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies can threaten or enhance the biodiversity of production forests: Insights from Sweden

Interrelationships between renewable energy and agricultural economics: An overview

Biofuels and biochemicals play significant roles in the transition towards a fossil-free society. However, large-scale biorefineries are not yet cost-competitive with their fossil-fuel counterparts, and it is important to identify biorefinery concepts with high economic performance. For evaluating early-stage biorefinery concepts, one needs to consider not only the technical performance and process costs but also the economic performance of the full supply chain and the impacts on feedstock and product markets. This article presents and demonstrates a conceptual interdisciplinary framework that can constitute the basis for evaluations of the full supply-chain performance of biorefinery concepts. This framework considers the competition for biomass across sectors, assumes exogenous end-use product demand, and incorporates various geographical and technical constraints. The framework is demonstrated empirically through a case study of a sawmill-integrated biorefinery producing liquefied biomethane from forestry and forest industry residues. The case study results illustrate that acknowledging biomass market effects in the supply chain evaluation implies changes in both biomass prices and the allocation of biomass across sectors. The proposed framework should facilitate the identification of biorefinery concepts with a high economic performance which are robust to feedstock price changes caused by the increase in biomass demand.

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Economic Evaluation of Large-Scale Biorefinery Deployment: A Framework Integrating Dynamic Biomass Market and Techno-Economic Models

https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/10903/7/munnich_m_elofson_k_131120.pdf

Is forest carbon sequestration at the expense of bioenergy and forest products cost-efficient in EU climate policy to 2050?

Consequential life cycle assessment of bioenergy systems – A literature review

http://www.usbe.umu.se/digitalAssets/25/25682_ues794.pdf

Damned if you do, damned if you do not—Reduced Climate Impact vs. Sustainable Forests in Sweden

Safeguarding species richness vs. increasing the use of renewable energy—The effect of stump harvesting on two environmental goals

Dead wood is recognized as being one of the most important factors for forest biodiversity for many organism groups. One of the Swedish official environmental objectives is therefore to increase dead wood volume. However, reducing climate impact through increased use of forest biofuels is likely to work against this objective. The analysis is based on a regional economic forest sector model, focusing on northern Sweden, that includes suppliers and major users of roundwood and ecological results of stump harvest on forest biodiversity. The parameters of the model are estimated with a data set spanning 28 years. We simulate the effects of an increased demand for wood fuels in northern Sweden, with or without stump harvest. The two scenarios have different effects on all major roundwood markets in the region, as well as on biodiversity. More specifically, in our model, the scenario with stump harvest implies a 0.3 percent decrease in the emissions of greenhouse gases and a 4.12 percent reduction in overall population density of saproxylic beetles on each years future clear cuts. Thus, a clear goal conflict exists.

Is Stump Harvesting a Remedy for the Climate Crisis or a Curse for Biodiversity? An Interdisciplinary Study of Conflicting Goals

Dead wood is recognized as being one of the most important factors for forest biodiversity for many organism groups. One of the Swedish official environmental objectives is therefore to increase de ...

http://www.cere.se/documents/wp/CERE_WP2012-5.pdf

Is Stump Harvesting a Remedy for the Climate Crisis or a Curse for Biodiversity? An Interdisciplinary Study of Conflicting Goals.

Single measures that are implemented in order to reach some goal often have effects on other goals as well. In this paper, we look at the Swedish environmental goal Zero eutrophication, and the two interconnected sub goals of nitrogen and phosphorus reduction. Measures that are taken in order to reduce nitrogen often have an effect on phosphorus emissions, and vice versa. Thus, the cost efficient set of measures has to be identified by analyzing how to reach both goals simultaneously. The paper maps the set of possible outcomes that a policy maker could choose from, and discuss how that choice could be informed by an environmental index (EI). The paper also discusses the benefits of, a priori, formulating the eutrophication goal in terms of an EI instead of, as today, in terms of separate nitrogen and phosphorus reduction goals. Finally, we suggest an eutrophication index and discuss how the results in the paper, based on very crude data, nevertheless could have a practical use.

/pdf/eutrophication-reduction-from-a-holistic-perspective-1favs6kc65.pdf

Erik Geijer

Papers

Damned if you do, damned if you do not—Reduced Climate Impact vs. Sustainable Forests in Sweden

Safeguarding species richness vs. increasing the use of renewable energy—The effect of stump harvesting on two environmental goals

Is Stump Harvesting a Remedy for the Climate Crisis or a Curse for Biodiversity? An Interdisciplinary Study of Conflicting Goals

Is Stump Harvesting a Remedy for the Climate Crisis or a Curse for Biodiversity? An Interdisciplinary Study of Conflicting Goals.

Eutrophication Reduction from a Holistic Perspective