UNECE/FAO Wood Energy Activities

The UNECE/FAO Timber Section has been working on monitoring and forecasting wood resources and demands for over 50 years. The Section has the primary data source on both forest products and forest resource at the regional level. In the past years it put significant efforts into data collection and improvement and market forecasts for the forest-based sector, wood energy, and recently also on the impacts of energy policies on the forest-based sector. Important steps were the "Joint Wood Energy Enquiry", to improve international statistics on wood energy. At the workshop "mobilizing wood resources" in January 2007 in Geneva, recommendations how to increase wood mobilization were elaborated with over 100 stakeholder from different sectors.

     >> 1. Current activities
     >> 2. Future steps: Empirical research
     >> 3. Previous activities

1. Current Activities

In early 2007, the UNECE/FAO Timber Section and the University of Hamburg launched together with other partners (European Commission (DG Enterprise), Confederation of European Paper Industry - CEPI, European Panel Federation - EPF , Swedish Forest Agency, Metsäteho Oy, Finland) a study to gather existing information on all sources of wood for material and energy use of wood. This information, in combination with existing outlook studies for the forest sector and policy objectives for renewable energy and bioenergy is being used as basis to build scenarios for wood demand and supply in 2010 and 2020. The results were presented at the UNECE/FAO Policy Forum on "Impacts and opportunities of bioenergy policies on the forest and other sectors" (10 October 2007).

Table 1: Past and proposed activities on monitoring and forecasting wood resources and demands

Phase	Type of activity	Description / Title	Date	Status
I	Enquiry	The Joint Wood Energy Enquiry (JWEE): Improving data on wood energy	2005 - 2007	done
II	Workshop	Mobilising wood resources (Workshop in Geneva)	January 2007	done
III	Study and conference	Study on "Wood resources availability and demands": Overview based on existing data (study to be presented at the UNECE/FAO Policy Forum, 10 October.	Mar - Oct 2007	done
IV	Review / workshop	Data validation (of phase III) by national correspondentsand assessment of potential wood supply Workshop 31 March / 1 April 2008	Nov 07- Apr 08	ongoing
V	Study	Empirical study on national level in several European countries to gather new and improve existing data on energy use of wood and sources of wood	2008 - 2010	proposed
VI	Study / Process	Incorporating wood supply and demand into sector outlook study	2008 - 2009	proposed

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2. Future steps: Empirical research

In particular during the study on "wood availability and demands" in 2007 it became clear, that in many countries crucial data on wood supply (in particular for currently unrecorded removals from the forest, post-consumer recovered wood, and woody biomass from outside the forest) and wood use (for energy use in households and small biomass power plants) have never been collected.

Table 2: Sources of wood supply and use with an urgent need for empirical research to get better information and statistics

Wood supply	Wood uses
Post consumer recovered wood	Biomass power plants
Woody biomass outside the forest	Wood energy in private households
Currently unrecorded removals from theforest residues	Biomass to liquid (BTL)
Energy plantations	(Wood based chemicals)

This information is indispensable to assess the current and future availability and use of wood, as well for bioenergy, as for the wood and paper industry in the context of all wood uses. Therefore, it is proposed to conduct a project in cooperation with the University of Hamburg, coordinating empirical research on wood resource balances in several major wood supplying and consuming countries to fill the gaps.

The outcome of the project will be a more complete set of data and an improvement of existing data on wood flows, including wood for material use, wood for energy and flows currently not captured by statistics. In the long term these activities should lead to a continuous, open and transparent process of improving data on national wood resources and wood flows. The process will improve knowledge as a basis for sound decision making in the forest and bioenergy sectors on national and international level, for governments, the private sector and other stakeholders.

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3. Previous Activities

Wood energy has been a regular topic at the annual Timber Committee Market Discussions since 2002. It featured as the major topic of the Policy Forum in 2003, the same year that it entered the agenda of the annual meeting of the Joint Working Party on Forest Economics and Statistics.

The breakout session on wood energy during the Joint FAO/ECE Working Party on Forest Economics and Statistics (15-17 March 2004, Geneva) confirmed the importance of reliable and accurate information in aiding policy discussions. A major obstacle in assessing the situation and the development throughout the UNECE region was the unsatisfactory quality of wood energy statistics. In the following year the secretariat was asked to assess the sources and quality of information available via national statistics correspondents and other sources.

After the passive assessment of available sources and information on wood energy the UNECE/FAO Timber Section started its active data collection process on wood energy. A draft questionnaire was developed and sent to sample countries by end 2005 and the Joint Wood Energy Enquiry was sent to all 56 member states in 2006.

Wood energy was the subject of discussion during the Joint FAO/ECE Working Party on Forest Economics and Statistics from 22-24 March 2005. A stakeholder analysis provided information about the different data available by county and the different organizations involved in data collection.

An outcome of the Joint FAO/ECE Working Party on Forest Economics and Statistics was the setting up of an ad hoc group on Wood Energy Statistics:

Other main UNECE / FAO outputs:

Regional overview JWPFES, results of a pilot study on wood energy []
Results of survey about wood energy information []

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