Towards sustainable wood procurement in forest industry - The energy efficiency of larger and heavier vehicles in Finland

A third of the final energy demand and almost a fifth of total emissions in the European Union is caused by road transportation. Advanced biofuels and larger and heavier vehicles have been seen in the literature as one potential logistics solution with which to improve the energy efficiency of the forest industry. The Finnish government aims to create a 100% carbon-neutral energy base by the year 2045, emphasizing the country's renewable forests as a source for energy and biofuel cycles. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the local biofuel cycling through larger and heavier vehicles may affect the sustainability of wood procurement in the industrial ecosystem by focusing on transport efficiency, cost-efficiency and energy efficiency. The paper presents a quantitative energy-performance analysis from the optimization of results of the multi-objective dynamic biofuel cycle model. Goal programming enables the energy management solution for three biofuel scenarios of larger and heavier vehicles in the 100% carbon-neutral wood procurement of decentralized energy production. Since the basic scenario in 2013, there has been an upward trend in the average payload weight and a transition in 7- to 9-axle vehicle combinations. While the increase in energy efficiency is significant, it is less than half of the government's maximum scenario estimated prior to the regulations. The novelty of this study is in providing the impacts of the local biofuel cycles (5%, 15% and 30%) on the energy efficiency of road freight transportation to create a 100% carbon-neutral energy base for Finland. Furthermore, the results also provide decision support to the ongoing policy debate towards the 100% sustainable wood supply and/or wood procurement of the industrial ecosystems in Europe.