Assessment and modeling of available forest resources in Europe for energy supply : final report

The project "Assessment and modeling of available forest resources in Europe for energy supply" has been led in the Institute for Environment and Sustainability of the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy between April 2009 and March 2012. An innovative methodology for the estimation of a sustainable level of forest wood resources use has been developed during the work on the project. This methodology is built on fundamental ecological rules and can be applied at local, regional or country scales. The results achieved in this Report are based on official data for the year 2005 provided by European countries to the FOREST EUROPE Ministerial Conference on Protection of European Forests in 2007. The year 2005 has to be seen as the corresponding year for all projections made in this Report. Most of the results presented in Chapter 3 are delivered through calculations made on the coefficients principle. This coefficients principle itself corresponds to the assumption that the level of renewable resources use depends on the ecological productivity of sites, which can differ very much at local and regional scale, or, as seen by the results presented in this Report, from one country to another. Forests are extremely dynamic ecosystems which play an extraordinarily important ecological role. Since these ecosystems are under continuously growing environmental pressure, the methodology, results and recommendations made in this Report are strongly suggested to be further discussed, improved and implemented in appropriate form.