Why the UN’s report on the State of the World’s Forest is James Cameron’s worst nightmare.

NEWS

Paris, 8 February (via Argus)

The UN year of the forest in 2011 is being launched with a number of reports outlining a positive role for forestry industries and biomass in particular.

The UN’s flagship study, The State of the World’s Forests 2011, paints a healthy picture for energy crop growers, calling for greater industrial integration, increased productivity and the rapid adoption of technological advances.

The report says demand for wood fuels, and for resulting land use, will increase as public policy drives changes in energy consumption, promoting biomass over more carbon-intensive energy. “The rising demand for land as a result of bioenergy policies is an emerging trend. Although the impacts of these policies remain uncertain and some policies are currently being revised, it seems likely that these developments will result in significant new demands for land and wood fibre,” the report said.

The report highlights the speedy growth in industrial wood pellet sales as an innovation that can increase demand for woodland, but also raises efficiencies in traditional wood fuel supply chains. Policy decisions are creating rapid growth in demand for wood energy requiring significant quantities of wood to be moved internally within nations and across borders.

But while advances are being made the authors highlight some difficulties facing the biomass industry, including the fractured nature of forest land, often in small parcels. Technological innovation can be slow to reach these areas where many landowners own small amounts of woodland. The relatively small size of the industry “restricts the development of suppliers, subcontractors, service providers and other supporting infrastructure, and fragmentation makes it difficult to achieve economies of scale and other efficiency gains,” the report said.

The report predicts that the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) will adversely affect companies that “have not invested in low-carbon technologies such as biomass boilers. Carbon costs for biomass-based plants will be lower than for fossil fuel plants, especially those that use coal,” it said.