Fuelwood, charcoal, and other wood-derived fuels (collectively known as woodfuels) are the world’s most important form of nonfossil energy. Production and consumption are concentrated in low-income countries, with five countries – Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria – accounting for about 50 percent of the total.
Biomass energy, which includes woodfuels, crop residues, and animal wastes, provides on average nearly 30 percent of total primary energy supply in developing countries. Although woodfuels are the dominant form of biomass energy, the current state of global data does not allow analysts to distinguish wood from othr forms of biomass in many countries.
In most industrialized countries, wood energy contributes only about 3 perent of total energy supply.
Most woodfuel comes from sources other than closed canopy forest so attributing fore modification to woodfuel collection is difficult. Insofar as forests are managed for fuelwood supply, practices are local and documentation is scattered. Trees are rarely felled; rather, branches and twigs are cut as needed. Plantations are estimated to provide less than 5 percent of global woodfuel supplies, though they assume greater importants in parts of China, India and South America.
The following summarizes key findings of the PAGE study regarding the conditions and trends in woodfuel use, as well as the quality and availability of data.
Conditions and trends
- About 1.8 billion cubic meters of wood are burned directly as fuel each year, equivalent to over half the total roundwood harvest. Production and consumption are concentrated in low-income countries.
- Woodfuels account for about 15 percent on average of primary energy supply in developing countries and up to 80 percent of total energy in some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
- In the industrialized countries, burning of industrial wood residues, as well as wood harvested directly for fuel, means that between 30 and 50 percent of total wood removed from forests is ultimately used for energy, but wood contributes only about 3 percent of total energy supply throughout the OECD region.
- Forests appear to supply only about one third of woodfuels. The balance is obtained from other sources, including woodlands, roadsides, backyards, community woodlots, and wood industry residues.
- Shortages of woodfuel exist at the local level but, at the global level, forecasts of scarcity have probably been exaggerated. Poor data mean that the likelihood of a future woodfuel crisis cannot be accurately assessed. Scarcity hotspots appear concentrated in areas of high population density, low tree cover, and low income.
Information status and needs
- Data on woodfuel production and consumption in most developing countries are limited, unreliable, and largely dependent on modeled estimates. Wood energy is generally accorded low priority in national energy planning, despite its major role in energy supply.
- Information is needed at the subnational and national levels on the sources of woodfuel and household and industrial consumption to develop better estimates of demand and integrate woodfuels into national energy planning.
- Development of the FAO Wood Energy Database can be expected to improve knowledge of nonforest sources of wood fuels and patterns of supply and demand. Information on the ecological impacts of woodfuel collection is patchy.
- More use of remote sensing data and and the development of low-cost sampling and analysis techniques could help to determine biomass balances associated with woodfuel collection. Such data would be relevant to both energy planning and environmental analysis.
Quality and availability of data
PAGE measures and indicators
Data sources and comments
Production volume
- FAOSTAT. Electronic database. Available on-line at http://FAOSTAT.fao.org/cgi-bin/nph-db.pl?subset=forestry. Mostly modeled data.
- International Energy Agency (IEA). 1996. Energy Statistics and Balances of Non-OECD Countries, 1994-95. Paris: IEA.
- Combustible Renewables and Waste Database (global). Data based on questionnaires and local databases.
Wood energy share of national final energy consumption
- International Energy Agency (IEA). 1996. Energy Statistics and Balances of Non-OECD Countries, 1994-95. Paris: IEA.
- Combustible Renewables and Waste Database (global). Good disaggregation of biomass fuels but time series not available.
Sources of woodfuel Regional Wood Energy Development Programme in Asia (RWEDP). 1997a. Regional Study on Wood Energy Today and Tomorrow in Asia. Field Document No. 50. GCP/RAS/154/NET Bangkok: FAO.
Regional studies in 16 Asian countries. Few systematic data on woodfuel collection or consumption are available.
Woodfuel scarcity Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN); Columbia University; International Food Policy Research Institute; and World Resources Institute. 2000. Gridded Population of the World, Version 2.
New estimate of global population density. DeFries et al., 2000. 1-km dataset of percentage tree cover (global). Areas of high population density, high dependence on woodfuel and low tree cover may be at risk of scarcity.
