The article discusses the issues of effectiveness of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) certification systems in relation to enterprises and the level to which the systems which present sustainability as a part of their ethos are accepted by consumers. The justifiability and topicality of this issue result from the increasingly strong interest in sustainability of the society as a whole as well as from the long-term vision of sector policies with respect to meeting the objectives of sustainable development. The increasing demand for natural resources exerts pressure on our planet. Sustainability is hence essential for our future and has long been in the centre of the European project. Its economic, social and environmental aspects which form the common objective of society have been acknowledged in EU agreements. A principal document of a global nature is the 2030 UN Agenda for Development, a sustainability programme which has the sustainability of forest ecosystems established in its Goal 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss. Visions, direction and goals of sustainable development have also been stipulated in the Paris Agreement on climate change (COP21), in the Addis Ababa action programme and in The Future We Want declaration, namely in its Chapter II, which appeals to enterprises and industries for developing strategies which would contribute to sustainable development. This study aims to analyse and assess the justifiability of the existence of certification systems in relation to processing operators and end consumers in the Czech Republic. From the results of the study, it can be concluded that, despite the strong representation of selected certification systems in the Czech Republic, their effectiveness in economic, social and environmental terms is not perceived exclusively positive by businesses and consumers.

In the European Green Deal and the Climate Act, the European Union has committed itself to achieving climate neutrality by 2050. This goal is to be achieved by joint efforts of all economic sectors, including forestry and its downstream sectors. One way to attain this goal is the effective and sustainable use of forest biomass for energy production. This article aims to quantify the potential of forest biomass resources for the production of electrical and thermal energy based on official departmental statistics, the current legal framework for forestry and the environment, and research results in the context of an extreme change in the raw material base due to the ongoing calamity caused by the spread of insect pests in the Czech Republic. This extreme can classify as a significant risk to the security of the energy supply from renewable sources in the event of oversizing new installed energy production from renewable sources. Based on data and calculations, an overall annual volume of dendromass available for energy production in the Czech Republic for the period extending to 2036 was quantified at the value of 13.473 million tons per year. Consequently, it is clear that the overall dendromass resources for energy production in the Czech Republic are not sufficient to achieve the EU’s ambitious objective.

ŠAFAŘÍK DALIBOR, BADAL TOMÁŠ:The economic effi ciency of forest energy wood chip production in regional use -A case study. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 2013, LXI, No. 5, pp. 1391-1398 This regional project case study deals with the limiting factors of economic effi ciency in the production of forest energy wood chips. The evaluation of production effi ciency made use of data obtained from the Lesy města Brna, a.s. (Forest of the City of Brno, Corp.), which were subjected to two static methods of investment evaluation: an analysis of the tipping point and determination of the limit of variable costs and a dynamic modifi ed tipping point analysis using cash fl ow (i.e. cash break even analysis). The results have confi rmed an established hypothesis, namely that the decisive factor in the profi tability of the production of forest energy wood chips hinges on the costs incurred in the gathering of raw material and the distribution of the produced chips. The results include a further limiting factor: transportation costs to the fi nal consumption location. The output of the study is a recommendation that the concentration of residual forest materials not exceed a distance of 250 m from the place of production to the point of disintegration and that the transport distance of energy chips not exceed 50 km from the place of disintegration to the fi nal consumption point. These limiting values help quantify the full internal costs per cost unit, full internal cost profi tability, total revenue profi tability and annual profi tability expressed in terms of fi xed assets depreciation without factoring in fi nancial aid.

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