The aim of this part of the research is to individuate total productivity of regional forest areas, both in terms of marketable wood and in terms of residues to be used for energy purposes. As previously underlined, the biomass usable for energy purposes is produced during silvicultural operations aimed at producing firewood and industrial wood. In fact, applying current prices it doesn’t result convenient to fell woods just for the purpose of producing wood chips for energy use. The two types of production result tightly bound since the amount of residues for energy purposes, that it is possible to recycle, is directly proportional to ecological and economic productivity of forests in terms of marketable assortments.

The work was articulated in the following phases. The first was the individuation and analysis of the geographic localization of forest resources through the Territorial

Information System. The second was the quantification of sustainable total productivity, by mean of a coefficient in term of biomass for hectare in a year.

In Sicily context, there are only two areas of the regional territory that produce this type of biomass and are two regional park: “Parco dei Nebrodi” and “Parco dell’Etna” .

The first elaboration on the Territorial information System concerned the selection of potentially productive forest crops on the basis of the following criteria:

— slope below 70%

— easy or rather easy accessibility

— slightly affected or free from erosion

Has been estimated that in Sicily it is theoretically possible to produce, free from environmental risks, more than 2,2 million tons of marketable wood and 500.000 tons of residues for energy production. Under the economic perspective, it isn’t convenient to exploit all woods, since not always the profits are able to cover the utilisation costs. By using a specific model, it has been possible to estimate that each year in Sicily there is a potential production of 1,15 million tons of firewood. The results of the model are coherent with the time series quoted in official statistics. The exploitation of this type of biomass is strongly connected with the forest utilization that in Sicily contest are very modest. Consequently the global potential is reduced to 7546 ton for “Parco dell’Etna” e 8734 ton for “ Parco dei Nebrodi”. In this last context has been carried out and energetic analysis comparing some different heat system and different fuel. Result of this study is that biomass is competitive with a price of 115€/t.