Sustainable forest-based bioenergy in Eurasia

This study analyzes the Russian forest biomass-based bioenergy sector. It is shown that presently - although given abundant resources - the share of heat and electricity from biomass is very minor. With the help of two IIASA models (G4 M and BeWhere), future green-field bioenergy plants are identified in a geographically explicit way. Results indicate that by using 3.78 Mt (or 6.16 M m3), twice as much heat and electricity than is presently available from forest biomass could be generated. This amount corresponds to 3.3% of the total annual wood removals or 12% of the annually harvested firewood, or about 11% of illegal logging. With this amount of wood, it is possible to provide an additional 444 thousand households with heat and 1.8 M households with electricity; and at the same time to replace 2.7 Mt of coal or 1.7 Mt of oil or 1.8 G m3 of natural gas, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels by 716 Mt of CO2-equivalent per year. A multitude of co-benefits can be quantified for the socioeconomic sector such as green jobs linked to bioenergy. The sustainable sourcing of woody biomass for bioenergy is possible as shown with the help of an online crowdsourcing tool Geo-Wiki.org for forest certification.