{"title":"Enhancing the economic feasibility of fuel treatments: Market and policy pathways for US Federal Lands","authors":"David N. Wear, Matthew Wibbenmeyer, Emily Joiner","doi":"10.1016/j.forpol.2024.103365","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The cost of fuel removal needed in the western United States exceeds available federal funding; therefore, meeting fuel treatment goals may require engaging the private sector to market treatment biomass. To assess the economics of fuel treatments in the western United States, we develop a spatially explicit model of the revenues and costs of fuel removal in Idaho and Montana. We find that fuel treatment sales would not be economically feasible across most of the study region unless prices of small-diameter material were to rise significantly. However, the area of feasible treatments could be dramatically expanded under current market conditions by bundling treatments with sawtimber harvest or subsidizing fuel treatment sales, perhaps through the allowance for negatively priced sales. In many places, required subsidies would be much lower than the cost of noncommercial alternative fuel treatments, indicating their potential to extend the impact of appropriated funding.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12451,"journal":{"name":"Forest Policy and Economics","volume":"169 ","pages":"Article 103365"},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Forest Policy and Economics","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934124002193","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
The cost of fuel removal needed in the western United States exceeds available federal funding; therefore, meeting fuel treatment goals may require engaging the private sector to market treatment biomass. To assess the economics of fuel treatments in the western United States, we develop a spatially explicit model of the revenues and costs of fuel removal in Idaho and Montana. We find that fuel treatment sales would not be economically feasible across most of the study region unless prices of small-diameter material were to rise significantly. However, the area of feasible treatments could be dramatically expanded under current market conditions by bundling treatments with sawtimber harvest or subsidizing fuel treatment sales, perhaps through the allowance for negatively priced sales. In many places, required subsidies would be much lower than the cost of noncommercial alternative fuel treatments, indicating their potential to extend the impact of appropriated funding.
期刊介绍：
Forest Policy and Economics is a leading scientific journal that publishes peer-reviewed policy and economics research relating to forests, forested landscapes, forest-related industries, and other forest-relevant land uses. It also welcomes contributions from other social sciences and humanities perspectives that make clear theoretical, conceptual and methodological contributions to the existing state-of-the-art literature on forests and related land use systems. These disciplines include, but are not limited to, sociology, anthropology, human geography, history, jurisprudence, planning, development studies, and psychology research on forests. Forest Policy and Economics is global in scope and publishes multiple article types of high scientific standard. Acceptance for publication is subject to a double-blind peer-review process.
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