Efficient and Sustainable Bioenergy Production in Swedish Forests — A Network DEA Approach

Wenchao Zhou, Moriah Bostian, Rolf Färe, Shawna Grosskopf and Tommy Lundgren

Data Envelopment Analysis Journal, 2021, vol. 5, issue 2, 363-394

Abstract: Forest fuel defined as branches and tops (GROT) of harvested trees represents a large share of forest biomass and is increasingly viewed as a potential energy source. This study assesses the economic potential of forest bioenergy production in Swedish forests, using a network data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to estimate the technology for biofuel and other forest products. We consider that forests are managed to use multiple inputs to produce multiple outputs. Outputs include sawtimber, pulpwood, fuelwood, and bioenergy in terms of GROT. Our model also considers environmental concerns over biodiversity and CO2 emissions from burning biomass. We apply the network DEA model to measure the revenue efficiency of forest production of Swedish forests using a panel consisting of 20 counties and covering the years from 2008 to 2014. Our results show that there exist persistent economic inefficiencies of forest production in some counties, reducing the overall efficiency of Sweden's forest and wood products industry. In addition, we also estimate the potential increase in bioenergy, deadwood and CO2 emissions reduction from combustion of bioenergy, and by-products from sawtimber and pulpwood.

Keywords: Climate; bioenergy; efficiency; environment; forests; network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/103.00000041 (application/xml)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:now:jnldea:103.00000041

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Data Envelopment Analysis Journal from now publishers
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucy Wiseman ().