How Will We Balance Production Forestry and Renewable Energy Systems In The Future?

Efforts to deliver climate-smart forestry have focused primarily on utilization of biomass residues or dedicated systems to produce bioenergy or manipulation of growth and yield to increase carbon uptake by forests. Woody biomass utilization to produce electricity, heat or biofuels has dominated forest operations and forest engineering research in the US for the last several decades. By comparison, very little attention has been paid to how operational planning, harvesting, and logistics may be impacted by the current, rapid transition to electrification of vehicles, equipment, and tools, or emphasis on other renewable energy systems. For example, solar and wind have received over $US 97 billion in investment recently as part of the US Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). How will we balance these energy systems, the conversion of transportation and equipment to electric or electric hybrid with sustainable forestry production? These new technologies may actually provide new opportunities for operational forestry to lead global efforts on climate and sustainability in ways that may simultaneously improve the profitability of our industry. A review of related literature and results of a nationwide US analysis of a new approach to integrated forestry and solar energy are presented.