Limits to Sustainable Use of Wood Biomass

Amounts of wood biomass from fast-growing forest stands are assessed with respect to maximum land productivity and with account for the capacity of photosynthesis. The results expressed in normalised coordinates of time and stock in general are relevant to any even-age stand. By comparing the energy densities of solar radiation transformed by photosynthesis and photovoltaic devices the authors argue that generating electricity by burning wood is an extremely inefficient use of land under conditions of sustainable supply of the fuel and conclude that transfer to bio-energy without radical changes in the existing economic system would further aggravate the environmental crisis.