How much energy could forestry contribute if some of the hill land currently used for sheep farming were used to produce coppice timber for biofuel?
 
 
There are approximately 220 square miles (58,000 hectares) of upland in Tweeddale currently used for sheep production. If 30,000h were turned over to sustainably managed (e.g. coppiced) native woodland, each hectare would produce about 12 tonnes of air dried timber a year or 360,000 tonnes a year. Dry wood (8% moisture) gives about 4800kwh per ton on the other hand wet wood (50% moisture) gives around 1800kwhrs per ton.  Properly stored wood should dry in about 20 months. Thus if burnt dry, this amount of wood fuel would provide 360,000*4800kWh of energy or 1,728,000,000kWh. If each person consumes 120 kWh a day or 43800 a year this is enough energy for about 40,000 people
 
The downside would be the loss of 25,000 ewes producing 25,000 lambs each year.

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