Forest biomass potential for wood pellets production in the United States of America for exportation: a review

Abstract

This document presents a review that covers the United States potential biomass resource for exports compared to the current levels the European Union and United Kingdom receive, and addresses current and potential risks, opportunities and challenges to increasing the volume of imports regarding sustainability of forest ecosystems before climate change, current forest management, and other factors such as social, economic, conservation, and sustainability of natural resources in the United States, when producing forest biomass for wood pellet production in Southern United States. From this review, it can be concluded that the majority of forest biomass assessments projections showed that forest biomass from the Southeast of the USA for wood pellets production in 2030 could vary from 74 million dry tons up to 95 million dry tons depending on the increment on prices per dry ton, and for 2050 could range from 85 for low consumption scenario to 162 million dry tons for high consumption scenario using a conversion factor of 2 green tons per one ton of wood pellets. Research needs are also pointed out in the document.

Keywords:

• wood pellets
• supply
• demand
• wood pellet markets

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Dr. Jeffrey Prestemon, and Dra. Consuelo Brandeis from Forest Service Research and Development Southern Research Station for their input and review of this document.

Disclaimer

The findings and conclusions in this publication are those of the author, and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or USA Government determination or policy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Wood energy is energy derived from wood, that is procured directly from forests (primary), indirectly as co-products from other manufacturing activities (secondary) and recovered at the end of wood product life cycles (tertiary) [8].

2 Co-firing is defined as the combustion of two independent fuels in order to produce energy (i.e. coal and wood pellets).