The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) organized a one-day workshop on estimating how much wood is available in Europe on a sustainable basis, including for use as biomass for energy.

The workshop, held in Geneva, Switzerland, on 30 March 2009, aimed to address gaps in knowledge, including considering socio-economic and bio-technical constraints to theoretical wood availability when assessing wood supply. The workshop recommended that countries should: carry out and share studies of potential sustainable wood supply; and use the workshop’s good practice principles for studies of potential wood supply, in the interests of international comparability. A revised version of the recent UNECE/FAO study on potential sustainable wood supply will be issued later in 2009. These recommendations, and other workshop conclusions, were subsequently endorsed by the 31st Session of the FAO/UNECE Working Party on Forest Economics and Statistics, which convened on 31 March 2009.
Link to further information
UNECE press release, 3 April 2009