Forest Maintenance Practices and Wood Energy Alternatives to Increase Uses of Forest Resources in a Local Initiative in Nishiwaga, Iwate, Japan

Takashi Hayashi, Daisuke Sawauchi and Daisuke Kunii
Additional contact information
Takashi Hayashi: Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 3-1-1, Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0013, Japan
Daisuke Sawauchi: Research Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Kita 9, Nishi 9, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-0809, Japan
Daisuke Kunii: Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 3-1-1, Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0013, Japan

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: This study assesses the impact of wood energy use under underutilized conditions of wood resources: the impact on promotion of forest maintenance practices (FMPs), user costs, and local economies, using the case of a local initiative in Nishiwaga, Iwate, Japan. We conducted two main analyses: resource and economic assessment. For resource assessment, we investigate whether wood supply from FMP residue is sufficient to sustainably satisfy new demand created by a local initiative in Nishiwaga, and in how much forest area can FMPs be performed to satisfy the demand. These questions are analyzed by linear programming. Regarding economic assessment, we investigate whether replacement of fossil fuel by wood energy brings economic benefit to a user and local economy using input–output analysis. Our overall findings demonstrated that the use of wood energy under underutilized situations can lead to an increase of implementations of FMPs and of domestic wood resource supplies from a short-term perspective that comes from residues of the FMPs. We also found that wood energy consumption introduces co-benefits in terms of reduced heating costs for users and a larger economic impact on the local economy than fossil fuel.

Keywords: forest maintenance practice; wood energy; underutilization; thinned trees; sustainable wood resource; Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/11/1949/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/11/1949/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:11:p:1949-:d:116518

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().