Renewables and domestic energy, lessons from Europe, Part 3
The obvious explanation is that we don't have as much native wood as other countries. As the following graph shows, this is (prima facie) a significant factor:
Source: FAO, Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005 (www.fao.org/forestry/fra2005/en/)
Clearly, some of the countries with high utilization of wood for energy (e.g. Austria, Finland, Portugal, Sweden and Latvia) are heavily-wooded countries.
But this is not the whole story.
Some heavily-wooded countries (e.g. Spain, Greece, Cyprus and, to a lesser extent, Slovenia) have relatively low utilization of wood for energy.
Conversely, Denmark, which is barely more wooded than the UK (14% of land in Denmark, 12% in the UK) has a high utilization of wood for energy (>9% of gross energy consumption, compared to <0.5% in the UK)
Some countries that are otherwise similar geographically (and in most other ways), have an inverse relationship between their wooded area and utilization of wood for energy. For example, Estonia has a higher proportion of wooded land than Latvia, but Latvia uses wood for a much greater proportion (>24%) of its gross energy consumption than Estonia (<10%). Likewise, Slovakia has a higher proportion of wooded land than the Czech Republic, but wood provides 50% more of the Czech Republic's gross energy consumption than it does in Slovakia.
Clearly (and predictably), policies and incentives also play a significant role.
