Abstract
Wood pellet exports from the Southeastern United States (SE US) to Europe have been increasing. The pellet exports are driven by policies that aim to displace coal with renewable biomass for industrial power plants. Increasing pellet production has raised concerns about the sustainability of supplies, carbon emissions, and potential impacts on the forests where the wood is harvested, as well as on the biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by those forests. An understanding of the interactions among forest markets, forest management, and forest ecosystem services is required to quantify the impacts of pellet production compared to what would be expected under a reference case or “counterfactual scenario” without pellet production. The lack of consistent methods to define and justify the counterfactual scenario results in conflicting estimates and large uncertainties about the impacts of pellet production on the SE US forests. We propose a set of guidelines that support a more consistent process for identifying and justifying counterfactual scenarios. We recommend that the process begin with an analysis of past and present conditions and consider the dynamic interactions among forest ecosystem services, markets, disturbance, and human management interventions. Development of counterfactual scenarios based on an analysis of historical and current conditions is a prerequisite to providing reasonable estimates of the net effects of SE US bioenergy production.
