Enhancing the adoption of short rotation woody crops for bioenergy production

• Adoption of short rotation woody crops (SRWC) for bioenergy production has not lived up to aspirations.
• R & D managers could assist adoption goals if they better understand how R&D activities can improve the economics of SRWC.
• Managers should be critical about the use of non-market values to justify R&D and recognize adoption is still required to generate societal benefits.
• Make use of more integrated biological and economic models to examine needs, opportunities and challenges.

Short rotation woody crops (SRWC) have not been widely adopted as a viable feedstock for bioenergy production. We discuss three major information needs for R&D Managers improving adoption prospects for SRWC: (1) Understand how R&D affects the economics of SRWC – particularly “unit costs” of production; (2) Prices and trends for energy and environmental improvement and how these compare to SRWC costs; (3) Integrated biological and economic models. To enhance adoption prospects for SRWC R&D Managers should seek to lower unit costs to make these types of plantations more competitive with other energy alternatives. If non-market values are used as an argument to justify SRWC R&D investments managers still need to address adoption impediments. Even if non-market values are significant, adoption is required for society to realize benefits. We also argue that bioeconomic models can help identify needs, opportunities and challenges and illustrate some of these principles with an empirical example from Canada.