The forest policy regime, regulating intertwined issues of forest management and wood supply activities, is highly concerned by the ‘energy transition’ political process. According to some assumptions at the European Union scale, wood volumes for energy generation are expected to increase by 66% between 2010 and 2020 (Mantau, et al., 2010). This situation can be interpreted as an environmental or economic threat by some actors involved in the forest sector but it can also be seen as a new opportunity for others. So, the ‘ecologization’ dynamics (Deverre and de Sainte Marie, 2008) of the forest sector associated to the ‘energy transition’ policy process are largely controversial, as the sector is put into stress on the way that it is governed. In this paper I propose to analyze this political shift as an institutional change of the forest policy regime driven by political work (Jullien and Smith, 2008) led by private, collective and public actors of the forest sector. I hypothesize that it challenges the sector-territory relationship through the empowerment of some scales of political authority (European Union, State or regional authorities), the involvement of new actors (energy firms for example) in the forest policy debate and the implementation of innovative instruments. By providing an analytical framework of the process of policy change illustrated by an empirical study of the evolution of the French forest policy, the paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the dynamics of legitimisation and politicization (political work) of ‘energy transition’ issues.
