Life cycle assessment of residential heat production from wood pellet combustion in the Northwest region of Russia

Egor Selivanov and Pavel Cudlín
Additional contact information
Egor Selivanov: Department of Forest Ecology, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, Mendel University in Brno, Brno, Czech Republic
Pavel Cudlín: Department of Ecosystem Functional Analysis of the Landscape, The Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS), Brno, Czech Republic

Journal of Forest Science, 2025, vol. 71, issue 4, 182-194

Abstract: The increasing global demand for energy and the negative environmental impacts of fossil fuel exploitation have driven interest in sustainable energy solutions, such as wood. The Russian Federation, as one of the world's largest pellet producers, has an opportunity to utilise pellets domestically. This study addresses the lack of publicly available life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on pellet production and utilisation in Russia, specifically examining the environmental impact of residential heat production from locally produced wood pellets. Utilising primary data from the Northwest region, the study follows ISO 14040 and 14044 standards and employs the ReCiPe 2016 (H) Midpoint v. 1.1 method to assess environmental impacts. The results indicate that the production of pellets is the dominant contributor to the global warming impact category, marine eutrophication, and fossil resource scarcity, while transportation has the least impact across all categories. Sensitivity analyses confirm the robustness of these findings, revealing that using natural gas for pellet drying increases emissions for global warming and fossil resource scarcity, and increasing transportation distance significantly raises emissions across all categories. The findings provide valuable insights for policymakers and stakeholders aiming to enhance the sustainability of similar bioenergy systems.

Keywords: bioenergy; biofuels; climate change; environmental impact; forest residues (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://jfs.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/88/2024-JFS.html (text/html)
http://jfs.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/88/2024-JFS.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

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:caa:jnljfs:v:71:y:2025:i:4:id:88-2024-jfs

DOI: 10.17221/88/2024-JFS

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Forest Science is currently edited by Mgr. Ilona Procházková

More articles in Journal of Forest Science from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().