Regional woody biomass supply and economic impacts from harvesting in the southern U.S

Lixia He, Burton English, Robert Menard and Dayton Lambert

Energy Economics, 2016, vol. 60, issue C, 151-161

Abstract: Demand for woody biomass from the southern United States (US) is increasing because of its reliability in supply, recent developments in co-firing and biofuel conversion technologies, overseas pellet demand, and the expected economic impacts from reorienting the forestry sector towards energy feedstock production. This research examines the interaction between a set of woody biomass harvesting sources (logging residue, non-merchantable, and merchantable roundwood) and wood types (hardwood, planted softwood, and natural softwood), and the impacts harvest costs have on the extraction of these materials in the southern US. The expected woody biomass availability and its geographic distribution are determined with a cost minimizing linear programming model. The marginal cost of woody biomass supply is determined for different energy production targets, subject to satisfying conventional wood demand. Given derived industry supply curves, the economic impacts of the sector are analyzed using the IMpact analysis for PLANning model (IMPLAN) at the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) level. The results suggest that forest biomass for energy production is projected to be available over a much wider price range with logging, residue, and non-merchantable and merchantable roundwood in these regions. Supply of hardwood and softwood biomass from merchantable roundwood is expected to increase if these materials can be harvested for non-conventional uses. Development of harvesting woody biomass from logging residue, non-merchantable, and merchantable timber has positive effects on local economies, bringing with it employment opportunities to some BEA regions.

Keywords: Woody biomass; Economic impact analysis; Marginal value analysis; Timber land harvest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q16 Q23 Q42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988316302456
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:eneeco:v:60:y:2016:i:c:p:151-161

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2016.09.007

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().