Uneven economic growth, rapid population increases, and high costs of fossil fuels have caused much of the human race to experience an energy crisis. For the world's poor people the energy requirements consist mainly of firewood. This crisis will be aggravated further as population trends begin to overwhelm natural resources. Future demands for wood will exert pressure on existing forests, especially tropical moist forests and trees grown outside those forests. In this publication, a case is made that bioenergy plantations have the potential to dramatically lower the projected shortfalls and, at the same time, reduce the pressure on the world's remaining tropical moist forests by fuelwood harvesting. As buffers, bioenergy plantations could produce an ecologically effective landscape. Present and future fuelwood deficits in the tropics and subtropics are reviewed. Sections included are: (1) "Summary and Abstract"; (2) "Introduction"; (3) "Energy Alternatives"; (4) "Using Wood for Energy"; (5) "Solar Energy Conversion Efficiency of Trees and Plantations"; (6) "Environmental and Ecological Considerations in Raising Bioenergy Plantations"; (7) "Yields and Economics of Bioenergy Plantations"; (8) "Bioenergy Plantations as Buffers to Aid Nature Conservation"; (9) "Social and Institutional Constraints"; (10) "Alternatives to Intensively Managed Bioenergy Plantations"; (11) "Use of Wood Residues and Waste to Supplement Bioenergy Plantations"; and (11) "Discussion." Acknowledgements and references are cited. (RT)