Towards sustainable wood procurement in forest industry – The energy efficiency of larger and heavier vehicles in Finland

Comparison of Energy Efficiency Indicators of Road Transportation for Modeling Environmental Sustainability in “Green” Circular Industry

“…This means that the road freight transportation sector of production industry needs to implement technical, engineering-based energy efficiency improvements to ensure that the climate goals will be attained [6,10]. In addition, the development of road transportation logistics and supply system-specific energy efficiency measurements will be necessary to reach the goals and to fulfill the sustainability criteria of greenhouse gas reductions (≥60%) [11][12][13].…”

“…In theory, the potential amount of sustainable energy from extensive production systems of forest wood could range from 625 to 898 million m 3 yr -1 (i.e., from 5312 to 7633 PJ (Petajoule), respectively) in 2030, while the annual total demand for transportation fuels is 18,123 PJ, if the fuel consumption can be retained at the level of 2015 [18]. This means that only in some countries could the available wood resources replace the national fossil fuel consumption of road freight transportation [11,19]. This may be possible in Finland because annual wood increase (growth) is larger than decrease in wood stock of forests ( Figure 1).…”

“…Therefore, the government approved its climate and energy strategy for 2030 in 2016, and set an objective that the renewable energy share of the market should be raised by 50% or more by 2030 [20]. Ultimately, the government aims to create a 100% carbon-neutral energy base, emphasizing the country's forests as a source for energy, fuel, and other sustainable products (green circular economy) [11]. However, there is a wide research gap in terms of integrating RES into a forest-industrial energy symbiosis.…”

“…However, there is a wide research gap in terms of integrating RES into a forest-industrial energy symbiosis. In addition to balancing sustainable forestry, the environmental sustainability of green circular industry presupposes that wood as RES is utilized in balanced wood-flow systems ( Figure 2) [11,21]. Apart from midstream and downstream [22,23], the focus is on upstream of RES-that is, the supply network of company suppliers.…”

“…On the other hand, Mirkouei et al [24] integrated RES and production to calculate the carbon balance of midstream of a supply chain system for a crude bio-oil production plant. Here, utilization of renewable wood biomass occurs through a dynamic supply network with hundreds of mills, e.g., by balancing carbon via transportation operation (activities) through the utilization of energy-efficiency measures in multi-objective operations research [11]. This requires closer external collaboration across logistics companies and firms, an information process which should be made more efficient in the country's dynamic industrial ecosystems [25][26][27][28][29].…”