Stimulating fuelwood consumption through public policies: An assessment of economic and resource impacts based on the French Forest Sector Model

Stimulating renewable energy is a crucial objective in view of tackling climate change and coping with future fossil fuel scarcity. In France, fuelwood appears to be an important source for the renewable energy mix. Using the French Forest Sector Model, our paper aims to assess the impacts of three policy options to stimulate fuelwood consumption: a consumer subsidy, a producer subsidy and a fixed-demand contract policy. We explored their impacts in terms of five groups of criteria: (1) forest resource dynamics; (2) variations in wood products prices and quantities consumed and produced; (3) trade balance; (4) budgetary costs; and (5) variations in agent surpluses. We show that no policy option is more desirable than another on the basis of all of these criteria and that trade-offs will determine which is the best policy option to be implemented. - Highlights: • We compare the bio-economic impacts of policies to boost fuelwood consumption in France. • We simulate a producer subsidy, a consumer subsidy and fixed public demand contracts. • We explore their impacts until 2020 with a dynamic model of the forest sector. • Producer subsidy reduces the trade balance deficit and decreases forest stock. • Consumer subsidy increases consumer welfare and public contracts reduce budgetary costs