A workshop is coming up to engage stakeholders to identify ways to improve data and data use for documenting sustainable forest management in wood pellet supply chains.
The workshop under the long title “Adequacy of spatial databases for conducting risk assessments of sustainable wood sourcing practices of the U.S. industrial wood pellet industry supplying European energy demand” will take place 1-3 May 2019 in University of Georgia, Athens, GA USA. It is a follow-up workshop from the conference “Biomass feedstocks for energy markets”, co-arranged by the SNS-NKJ network “Governing sustainability of bioenergy, biomaterial and bioproduct supply chains from forest and agricultural landscapes” and CAR-ES III “Centre of Advanced Research on Environmental Services from Nordic Forest Ecosystems”.
The workshop aims to identify ways to improve data and data use for documenting sustainable forest management in wood pellet supply chains through the following:
- Review current wood sourcing practices and state-of-art practices for conducting company level and regional risk assessments of the U.S. industrial wood pellet industry supplying European bioenergy demand, based on the findings of a new study and company experiences.
- Identify new ways in which existing regional databases and data collected by use of new technologies can help conducting supply area, regional and national level risk assessment.
- Identify possible needs for improved or new data.
- Discuss alternative approaches to certifying wood pellet feedstock sourced from sustainably managed forests in the southeast U.S., such as group certification.
- Discuss proposals for improving the overall efficacy of Forest Management Unit level, group and risk-based certification for all stakeholders associated with wood pellet supply chains to Europe and other developing regional markets.
Program, registration and information about the workshop (PDF)


The name of the conference is “People and networks matter – enabling sustainable bioeconomy transition” and takes place in Karlstad in Sweden 27-28 March 2019.
The extremely dry and hot weather this summer clearly demonstrated the need for Nordic cooperation and the benefits of learning from each other when it comes to extreme situations for agriculture and forestry.
This is how NKJ will look from now on. The board meeting October 23th in Norway agreed on this new logo.

Introduced to Lukasz Andrzej Derdowski, who’s also conducting research in the field of work-related creativity, the participants were invited to draw themselves and note their key interests. Pinned to the wall and done relations to the people they already knew participating at the Matchmaking day, this activity resulted in a low-tech social network, which got expanded throughout the whole day.
The intense networking day ended with a last coffee and mingle while completing the low-tech network to a real piece of art with many new, interesting and helpful contacts for the participants.


