Integrated harvesting of a hybrid poplar (Populus x. canadensis) plantation for extracting timber for a local sawmill and woodchips for energy is analyzed under the economic and environmental point of view. To perform the environmental impact assessment the methodology of LCA has been selected, using as main tool the software SimaPro 8.0, following the method ReCiPe 2008, having into account the capital goods, such as the machinery fabrication processes. The harvesting operations and fertilization were the most impacting processes, while gravity irrigation does not have such environmental relevance. The most important normalized impacts were marine ecotoxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, freshwater eutrophication, human toxicity and metal depletion. The ultimate reasons of these impacts are discussed, besides some ways of reducing them. The economic analysis was performed using actual costs and indicators such as the Net Present Value NPV and the Internal Rate of Return IRR. The 10% IRR is overpassed when the wood price is greater than 79,0 (sic) per green tonne, assuming a 45 (sic)/green tonne price for the chips delivered to a power plant. Under both environmental and economic points of view, in the studied case, producing chips for energy from a harvesting system integrated with wood from hybrid poplar plantations with 10 years rotation is preferable to the chip production from the same species short rotation (3 years) coppices. Base case scenario has been analyzed considering hectare as the functional unit. Nevertheless, if the chosen functional unit were the chips dry tonne (ODT), assigning the impacts among wood and chips in the integrated harvesting case using a mass criterium, the environmental impacts of chips production are quite reduced if they come from integrated conventional plantation than from SRCs.
