Efficient and Sustainable Bioenergy Production in Swedish Forests — A Network DEA Approach

Forest fuel defined as branches and tops (GROT) of harvested trees represents a large share of forest biomass and is increasingly viewed as a potential energy source. This study assesses the economic potential of forest bioenergy production in Swedish forests, using a network data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to estimate the technology for biofuel and other forest products. We consider that forests are managed to use multiple inputs to produce multiple outputs. Outputs include sawtimber, pulpwood, fuelwood, and bioenergy in terms of GROT. Our model also considers environmental concerns over biodiversity and CO₂ emissions from burning biomass. We apply the network DEA model to measure the revenue efficiency of forest production of Swedish forests using a panel consisting of 20 counties and covering the years from 2008 to 2014. Our results show that there exist persistent economic inefficiencies of forest production in some counties, reducing the overall efficiency of Sweden’s forest and wood products industry. In addition, we also estimate the potential increase in bioen-ergy, deadwood and CO₂ emissions reduction from combustion of bioenergy, and by-products from sawtimber and pulpwood.