Introduction

The purpose of this book is to assess the technical, economic, and ecological ability of U.S. forests to meet future U.S. energy needs, especially for transportation fuels and electric power, and to provide detailed case studies from several U.S. regions. Interest in utilizing energy resources from forests, farms, and other biomass for energy has been rapidly increasing in recent years because of growing concern about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the desire to develop alternatives to increasingly scarce, expensive, and insecure oil supplies.