Development of methodologies for the evaluation of sustainability to support the local scale planning of forest -wood-energy supply chains

The Thesis deals with sustainability assessment methods for supporting energy policies at local scale. Methodologies and tools should adapt to policy needs, and bring benefits to local stakeholders and decision-makers. The Thesis aims to contribute to bring innovative sustainability assessment methods into local level decision processes, and to develop a comprehensive method to support energy, environmental and rural policies at local scale. It originates from the following research questions: How should scientific assessment methods have to be adapted to local policy needs? What are benefits and limitations for the involved actors in applying sustainability assessments at local scale? The different presented works provide some findings to enhance the Science-Policy link, with a focus on local energy policy. The research activity faced different aspects related to local decision-making support, with the general aim of providing effective tools to support local policy in developing bioenergy supply chains. The challenge of local policies and plans related to resource usage and productive chains is to respond to regional or supra-regional guidelines, to address site specific needs from local communities and stakeholders, and to set up detailed objectives and actions, taking into account the actual material availability, and possible development scenarios. The Chapter 1 focuses on the need of a multidisciplinary approach for ensuring sustainable processes and plans. It describes the relationships between energy and forestry sectors, and the need of holistic methods to plan a sustainable use of the resources. Particularly, the importance of evaluating environmental, social and economic aspects at local scale is highlighted. The methods – proposed in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 – contribute to quantitatively evaluate of environmental aspects – considering also social and economic dimensions – and to define achievable policy targets.