ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF ENERGY UTILIZATION OF WOODY BIOMASS CONSIDERING HUMAN RESOURCE TRANSFER FROM CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY TO FORESTRY

Abstract

 Despite the fact that utilization of biomass is important from the viewpoints of global warming issue and energy security, there are technical, economic, and social issues concerning the collection, transportation, and energy recovery of unutilized thinned trees. This study focused on human resource transfer from construction industry to forestry in terms of job development, and a methodology to investigate a possibility of human resource transfer was proposed. Environmental and economic evaluation of additional energy utilization of unutilized thinned trees due to the supposed human resource transfer was also conducted through a case study. To investigate the possibility of the human resource transfer, the business skills of workers from the forestry and construction industries were extracted using questionnaire and literature surveys. Further, the similarity of their business skills was investigated. If the similarity of their skills was high, human resource transfer was assumed to be possible. As a result of the case study, it was concluded that if a human resource transfer were to occur, 80% of unutilized thinned trees could possibly be harvested for generating energy. This effect corresponds to a GHG reduction of 2.4 million tons.