Assessing the impacts of rising fuelwood demand on Swedish forest sector: An intertemporal optimization approach

An increase in the demand for fuelwood has the potential to affect traditional timber production. Based on a partial equilibrium model of the Swedish forest sector, this paper evaluates the supply and price of sawlogs, pulpwood and fuelwood under differing levels of future fuelwood demand. The results indicate that an increasing demand for fuelwood would intensify the competition between pulpwood and fuelwood, which would cause the prices of pulpwood and fuelwood to increase. The pulpwood supply would decrease and the fuelwood supply would increase in response to fuelwood demand expansion. An increasing demand for fuelwood would affect the harvest of sawlogs positively, though the effect would be small. It is concluded that an increase in the use of fuelwood would affect mainly the pulp and paper industry in terms of the provision of raw materials. Besides, the annual increment of forest standing volume would exceed the harvest in all the scenarios analyzed, implying that the Swedish forests are a carbon sink. •A partial equilibrium model of Swedish forest sector is developed that explicitly links the supply of sawlog, pulpwood and fuelwood.•The optimization method instead of the econometric method is applied to determine the interdependence between different timber products.