Decision-making Support for Forest Ecosystem Services in Europe - Value Assessment, Synergy Effects and Trade-offs

Grant: € 1,68 M
Funder: Sum Forest ERA NET
Duration: 2016-12-01 – 2020-12-31
Project manager: Camilla Widmark

Forests offer a multitude of ecosystem services; thus, the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. Accordingly, forest ecosystem services, are those benefits that people obtain from forest ecosystems, such as timber, food, alternative energy materials, climate mitigation, water quality, biodiversity, recreation, and cultural benefits. This research project – POLYFORES – focus on the synergies of using forest residuals for example for bioenergy and climate mitigation, but also the trade-offs between different uses of the forest, for example timber production and recreation. Recognizing the multiple dimensions of ES values is key for capturing the diversity of societal demands focused on forest ecosystem services. In recent years, multiple authors have raised claims towards integrating the non-economic values into ecosystem services valuation and indeed the studies combining different value dimensions into a coherent framework are starting to emerge. POLYFORES has been designed based on the observation of a trend towards intensification of forest use in many European countries: On the one side, this trend is fueled by an increasing demand for forest products and services, driven by global population and income growth and an increasing per capita consumption of forest products politically promoted by a shift towards bio-economy. On the other side, an increasing area of forests is protected for biodiversity and recreational values or not managed at all due to the lacking interest of forest owners. This de facto decreases the share of actively managed forest lands. Consequently, meeting growing demand for forest biomass on the remaining area is inevitable leading to important decisions involving synergies and trade-offs among forest ecosystem services.

POLYFORES aims at first to map ecological impacts between different forest ecosystem services at both temporal and spatial scales. Second, the aim is to provide a holistic approach to value assessment to consider different valuation taking into account multiple-levels of decisions-making. Third, and last, the aim of POLYFORES is to support decision-making processes of forest ecosystem services at different levels (like Pan-European, EU, national and sub-national). The project is organized into six work packages that in different combinations of ecologic, economic and political science models studies forest ecosystem services, hence combining natural and social sciences disciplines. The project is also focus on contributing to the policy science and practice interface.

The work-packages are, in summary:

• WP 1 - Scientific and administration of the project, including scientific coordination of the other five work-packages.
• WP 2 - Assessment of ecological impacts including developing simulations models to assess conflicts and synergies of forest ecosystem services as well as provide ecological decision-making support.
• WP 3 - Assessment of economic and non-economic values of forest ecosystem services, considering trade-offs and synergies between them.
• WP 4 - Policy assessment with the aim of analyzing how policies address forest ecosystem services and how synergies and trade-offs are identified.
• WP 5 – Investigating how policy objectives and regulatory frameworks operates in practice, linking policy science and landscape ecology.
• WP 6 – Facilitate coherent and integrated decision-making towards sustainable and multifunctional forest management.

Project consortium includes 8 partners, from 7 countries: Austria, Belarus, Germany, Norway, Russia, Spain, and Sweden. The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and EFINORD is the lead partner and is responsible for coordination and management of the project.

Grant: € 2,5 miljoner
Duration: 2017-2020
Funder: Interreg Baltic Sea Region
Project manager: Peichen Gong

The project aims to increase production of renewable energy in the Baltic Sea Region by improving the capacity of public authorities, forest and energy agencies, organizations of forest owners and entrepreneurs, and forest advisory organisations for promoting the harvest and use of logging residues and small trees cut in early thinning. Based on available technologies and research results, the project will develop cost-effective and sustainable harvest methods, decision support tools, guidelines and training programs for harvest of logging residues and small trees. The project will also produce, in close cooperation with key stakeholders, a GIS platform and database for producing spatially explicit estimates of forest biomass potentials, and innovative business models for developing small-scale bioenergy plants in rural area in the Baltic Sea Region.

The project consortium consists of 13 partner organizations from 6 countries. The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences is the lead partner, and is responsible for coordination and management of the project.

Funder: EFORIS, Energiforsk
Grant: 1 071 500 sek
Duration: 2017-2018
Project manager: Runar Brännlund
Researchers: Thomas Broberg, Runar Brännlund, Tommy Lundgren, Lars Persson
(Swedish: Värdet av effektreduceringar och strömavbrott i svenskt näringsliv och offentlig sektor)

There is today a lively discussion about the question of whether we should have an explicit supply security target for electricity. In short, the discussion is relevant for (at least) two reasons. The first is that the deregulation of the electricity market in 1996 meant that an explicit delivery security target disappeared. The second is the concern that supply, or delivery, security will deteriorate due to the change we see in the production mix towards increasingly intermittent power production. However, the issue of a possible delivery security target, and at what level, cannot be separated from the cost and the value of achieving a given target. The purpose of this project is to study the value, or cost, for power reductions or power outages, for business and the public sector. Estimating the value of electricity, or the cost of loss of electricity, for businesses, including agriculture and the public sector, calls for a different approach than when the household sector is being studied. The objectives of the project can be summarized as follows:

• Estimate costs for power constraints and power outage for business and public sectors.
• Analyze factors that affect differences in costs between different industry sectors.
• Based on estimated costs, carry out scenario analyzes of different power limitations / power outages of different duration and at different times.
• Get a deeper understanding of the driving forces behind changes in the cost of power outages over time.
• Contribute to method development to estimate power outages.

Grant: 5 674 000 sek
Duration: January 2015 - June 2018
Funder: Swedish Energy Agency
Project manager and contact: Andrius Kazukauskas

Grant: 1 500 000 sek 
Funder: Energiforsk
Project manager and contact: Bengt Kriström

The project aims to study the effects of energy taxation from a general equilibrium perspective

Funderes: Torsten Söderbergs Forskningsstiftelse
Duration: 2013-2014
Contact: Tommy Lundgren

An important part of the sustainability debate has been devoted to what companies can do to facilitate sustainable development, so called corporate social responsibility (CSR). Profit maximization doesn't have to be in conflict with social responsibility as this behaviour may be strategic. Many empirical studies focus on the effects of being socially responsible on firm profitability. To some extent there are also theoretical analyses of CSR, but this research is still in its infancy; more theoretical studies combined with econometric analysis are needed to understand the drivers behind CSR. Furthermore, empirical studies of CSR need a stronger theoretical foundation than what we have seen in literature thus far. Specifically, in the context of CSR, we want to more closely examine the role of preferences, uncertainty, causality, cost of capital, risk, and public policy. It will become evident that these significant elements of economics and finance research agenda are closely linked to CSR.

Grant: 1 590 000 sek
Funder: Energiforsk
Project manager and contact: Runar Brännlund

Funder: Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
Duration: 2016-2018
Project Manager: Gabriel Michanek, Uppsala University
Contact: Göran Bostedt 

Grant: 1 500 000 sek
Funder: Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius Stiftelse
Duration: 2014-2017
Project manager and contact: Ann-Kristin Bergquist

Grant: 3 599 000 sek
Funder: Swedish Energy Agency
Duration: 2015-2017
Project leader and contact: Tommy Lundgren

In practice, the climate and energy policy decisions rarely account for the so-called rebound effect. This effect erodes the potential of achieving energy conservation from increasing energy efficiency. Therefore, the rebound effect should be considered when designing climate and energy policies. However, we argue that the knowledge about the effect is generally insufficient. For instance, we can find no empirical studies on Swedish industry that aim at discovering the actual rebound effect and its determinants based on historical firm level data. This is the general goal of this project, and it will increase the understanding of how climate and energy policy decisions may contribute to energy conservation and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions – highly relevant for all countries.

Main partner and funder: Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management
Duration: Ongoing
Contact: Göran Bostedt or Runar Brännlund

The project is based on a survey from the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management.