Assessing the impacts of rising fuelwood demand on Swedish forest sector: An intertemporal optimization approach

Abstract

An increase in the demand for fuelwood has the potential to affect traditional timber production. Based on a partial equilibrium model of the Swedish forest sector, this paper evaluates the supply and price of sawlogs, pulpwood and fuelwood under differing levels of future fuelwood demand. The results indicate that an increasing demand for fuelwood would intensify the competition between pulpwood and fuelwood, which would cause the prices of pulpwood and fuelwood to increase. The pulpwood supply would decrease and the fuelwood supply would increase in response to fuelwood demand expansion. An increasing demand for fuelwood would affect the harvest of sawlogs positively, though the effect would be small. It is concluded that an increase in the use of fuelwood would affect mainly the pulp and paper industry in terms of the provision of raw materials. Besides, the annual increment of forest standing volume would exceed the harvest in all the scenarios analyzed, implying that the Swedish forests are a carbon sink.

Keywords

Fuelwood; Timber market; Forest sector model; Partial equilibrium model

Published in

Forest Policy and Economics
2019, volume: 105, pages: 91-98
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

SLU Authors

• Gong, Peichen

  • Department of Forest Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Guo, Jinggang

  • Department of Forest Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Global goals (SDG)

SDG7 Affordable and clean energy

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science
Economics

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2019.05.020

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/100640