Emerging Biomass Industry: Impact on Wood Fiber Markets

RISI's new study - Emerging Biomass Industry: Impact on Wood Fiber Markets, will analyze the continued growth in demand for wood fiber from the biomass industry, look at how this growth will impact wood fiber prices and examine how each sector of the forest products industry will be affected.

The report will help executives develop answers to questions, such as:

• Lumber mills have been losing money for over a year now - will increased biomass demand for energy raise residual prices and bring lumber mills back into the black?
• Producers are increasingly offsetting rising energy costs by using their residual wood fiber as a fuel source - how will this affect wood fiber supplies and prices?
• With increased wood fiber demand from bioenergy plants, panel producers will become smaller players in the market for residual fiber - will they lose the ability to influence pricing for their raw materials?
• North America is seeing a surge in development of wood pellet capacity in order to meet the rapidly expanding demand in Europe - but what is the outlook for future demand for pellets in the US, Europe and Japan?
• Renewable Portfolio Standards and Congressional targets for liquid biofuels will apparently provide a significant boost to wood demand in the US - but how realistic are current policies and their objectives?

In addition RISI's Emerging Biomass Industry study will feature analysis of the following topics:

• Regional analysis - detailed review of all major North American producing regions.
• Energy production - a forecast of wood fiber use for energy production by region and sector (pulp, paper, panel, and lumber) - What will demand for wood fiber be from each forest products sector and region?
• Electricity generation facilities - a review of all existing US electricity generation facilities looking at current and potential wood fiber consumption - how much wood fiber is currently being consumed at existing facilities and what is the potential for demand at facilities not currently using wood fiber?
• Wood pellet and liquid biofuels - what is the potential for wood fiber demand from new and existing energy, wood pellet, and liquid biofuels facilities?
Feed stock analysis - comparison of the competitiveness of wood fiber against alternative feed stocks such as agriculture residues and new energy crops - how much energy demand is going to come from wood fiber and how will transportation and storage fees impact prices?
• Exchange rates/oil prices - What is the outlook for global oil prices and exchange rates and how will they effect demand for energy from wood fiber?
• Policy issues - How realistic are current domestic and international government policies and their objectives and how will the final version of these policies drive demand for wood fiber?
• Demand, supply and prices - an outlook on wood fiber demand, supply and prices, integrating analysis, models, and forecasts from RISI experts in all sectors of the forest products industry.

To learn more about RISI's Timber and Woodfiber analysis products, click here .