Abstract
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) instigated a pandemic that impacted economies, employment, and shipping worldwide. This paper reviews how one international supply chain performed and identifies lessons that may be helpful to improve future resilience. Economic and employment data through November 2020 are used to review the effects of COVID-19 on operations of the bioenergy supply chain in the southeastern United States (SE United States) that utilizes wood fiber to fabricate pellets. Conditions associated with the production of pellets in the SE United States changed with the outbreak of COVID-19. Federal and state government programs and classification of workers in this sector as “essential” during the pandemic helped maintain the woody pellet supply chain and other industries during a period of general shut down in 2020. The availability of personal protective equipment, long-term supply contracts, and established safety cultures are among the factors that enhance supply chain resilience while limited availability of skilled workers, inadequate stakeholder engagement, and dependence on external policies are among factors that reduce resilience. The analysis concludes with recommendations for the SE pellet supply chain, and other biomass supply chains, to improve their resilience to future disturbances. When best practices are implemented, SE United States biomass offers opportunities to contribute to post-pandemic economic recovery while incentivizing better forest resource management.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 674138 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Forests and Global Change |
| Volume | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 11 2021 |
Funding
The forestry sector’s resilience was supported by well-ventilated work environments and existing protocols for protecting worker health and safety. The availability of PPE to increase safety and reduce the transmission of COVID-19, benefited forest workers, pellet mills, and the paper and lumber mills that provide residues for pellets. Availability of PPE varied by state. Many workers in the Southeast contracted COVID-19, and it was difficult for some lumber mills to secure skilled replacements. COVID-19 caused some forestry operations and mills to shut-down for 2–6 weeks due to positive cases and lack of backup crews. Initially, availability of PPE equipment was a †Copyright Notice: This manuscript has been authored in part by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the United States Department of Energy (DOE). The United States government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). We would like to thank Henrietta Jager, Kyla Cheynet, and Thomas Schuler for helpful comments on prior versions of this manuscript. We would also like to thank collaborators in IEA Bioenergy?particularly Jim Spaeth, Bruno Gagnon, Jean Blair, and Mark Brown?for support and guidance. Funding. KK?s contribution was supported by the United States Department of Energy?s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), under award number EE0007088 to ORNL. ORNL is managed by the UT-Battelle, LLC, for DOE under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Contributions of VD and ER were partially supported by International Energy Agency (IEA) Bioenergy Technology Collaboration Program, Task 43: Sustainable Biomass Supply Integration for Bioenergy within the Broader Bioeconomy. The University of the Sunshine Coast (ABN 28 441 859 157), Sippy Downs, Queensland, Australia, manages and administers funding on behalf of IEA Bioenergy Task 43.
Keywords
- COVID-19
- bioenergy
- densified biomass fuel
- forestry
- pandemic
- resilience
- supply chain
- woody pellets