5. Conclusion
This paper provides an economic analysis of global woody
biomass energy potential. The analysis is conducted by using a
spatially explicit partial equilibrium model, which includes a
detailed description of woody biomass supply both from forests
and plantations. The subject has been studied extensively in the
literature, but previous studies have focused on land-use modeling, ignoring the forest sector or on forest sector modeling,
ignoring land-use issues, or they are not based on economic
analysis. The advantage of the economic optimization model is
that it explicitly considers the competition between alternative
uses and sources of woody biomass through the market mechanism. The disadvantage is that it includes complex interactions of
supply and demand, which makes the model less transparent
compared to non-economic models that consider woody biomass
use for energy in terms of different potentials (Smeets and Faaij,
2007a; Anttila et al., 2009).