The carbon benefits from forest bioenergy have been controversial with some environmental groups and scientists considering it to be even worse than coal while others contend that its use can lead to substantial savings in emissions relative to coal. Studies assessing the GHG implications of forest bioenergy differ in the source of emissions (biogenic or life-cycle) that they are accounting for, the metric used for this accounting, the spatial scale at which these emissions are measured, the time frame over which they are measured, and the counter-factual baseline that emissions with the use of forest bioenergy are compared to. The implications of these underlying differences across studies and the importance of including market feedback effects and behavioral responses in this assessment will be discussed.

By Prof. Madhu Khanna, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign