Bioenergy based on wood chips as the development driver of non-urban forested areas - the case study of Ural region, Russia

Abstract

One of the most important key factors for the development of non-urban areas is infrastructure, and energy generation is one of the fundamental infrastructure elements. This paper provides a new solution for energy generation based on wood chips which has a multi-sector effect because the authors offer to combine planning of forest cleaning cutting with bioenergy generation in one complex project, which will have socio-economic and ecological effects. The situation with forest fires makes the authors’ idea more attractive because after forest fires the problem of cleaning cutting in forest becomes very important and urgent by ecological and economical points: after cleaning cutting there are a lot of low quality wood which can be recycled into chips for the production bioenergy by the authors’ idea. This enriched methodology has successfully been applied into the regional strategical planning in the field of bioenergy and forestry of the Ural region of Russia; however, it is suitable for applications in regional development in any non-urban forested region of the world.