Markets for Forest Biomass Promote Sustainable Forest Management
WASHINGTON, DC – David P. Tenny, President and CEO of the National Alliance of Forest Owners, offered the following comments on the Forest Sustainability in the Development of Wood Bioenergy in the U.S. study released today by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation and H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment:
Forest biomass is a domestic, sustainable, and carbon-friendly source of renewable energy that is fundamental to our energy security. The Pinchot/Heinz study raises a number of questions that have been common to the ongoing policy discussion on the use of biomass for energy, providing a point of view that will contribute to the national dialogue.
While the Pinchot/Heinz study does not reach any conclusions about biomass, it frames the questions for which a significant body of information is available to inform policy makers. This includes studies that sharpen our understanding of potential demand for biomass, how biomass supply will increase in response to increased demand, existing environmental safeguards for sustainable biomass production and the climate change benefits of forest biomass as a carbon neutral energy source.
Often overlooked in the discussion of how to sustainably produce biomass for future energy needs is the historic relationship between private forests and markets for forest products that forms a cornerstone of the American success story in sustainable forest management and has helped make the United States a world leader in sustainable forestry. Markets provide a powerful conservation tool for sustaining forestland by enabling private forest owners to invest in sustainable forest practices and keep their land in forest rather than being compelled to convert it to non-forest uses.
The results of this relationship speak for themselves. U.S. forests have been stable or increasing for a century and the standing volume of trees in our forests has increased 50 percent over the last 50 years. It is because of strong markets for forest products that our forests today are so well positioned to help meet the growing renewable energy demands of the future and serve as a primary source of climate change mitigation. The advent of new markets for renewable biomass energy simply opens a new chapter in our nation’s ongoing success story of sustainable forest management through strong and diverse forest products markets.
Recent studies (here) answering questions raised in the Pinchot/Heinz report include:
Ecological sustainability – The National Council for Air and Stream Improvement describes how biomass energy harvests are ecologically sustainable under current frameworks in the United States.
Forest landowners’ response to energy markets – The University of Georgia and North Carolina State University explain how landowners will likely respond to biomass energy markets, particularly in the U.S. South and Northwest, concluding that new markets will enable forest landowners to invest in forest management practices that will improve forest productivity to sustainably meet increased supply needs.
Likely forest bioenergy demand by 2020 – Forisk Consulting, one of the leading U.S. firms in economic forecasting, has developed a data-driven methodology to predict the amount of announced bioenergy capacity that will likely be in production by 2020. They conclude that approximately 36% of the capacity announced today will result in new bioenergy production in the next ten years.
Carbon benefits – The National Council for Air and Stream Improvement uses the prevailing conclusions of contemporary science to explain why renewable forest biomass energy is beneficial to atmospheric carbon as part of the natural carbon cycle.
Environmental regulation of private forests in the U.S. – The National Alliance of Forest Owners provides a concise summary of existing laws, regulations, and non-regulatory policies at the federal, state and local level that provide the framework for sustainable forest management in the United States and that enable the U.S. to be a world leader in sustainable forest management.
This information is summarized and available on NAFO’s website at www.nafoalliance.org/studies.
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NAFO is an organization of private forest owners committed to advancing federal policies that promote the economic and environmental values of privately-owned forests at the national level. NAFO membership encompasses more than 75 million acres of private forestland in 47 states. View NAFO’s interactive map to see the economic impact of America’s working forests.
Tags: biomass
