Deliverables
- This work provides a comparative overview on the market situation and dominating energy wood production chains in selected European countries.
- For every country we start with giving an overview of the size, relevance, main activities of the forestry sector, forest ownership and forest industry.
- Then the main wood fuels are identified.
Each country has different wood energy utilisation and different potential for each fuel.
- Also regulation and energy and environmental policies have an impact on wood energy utilisation.
- Some general energy and renewable energy characteristics are included to provide background information for the market analysis.
Results:
- In the country overview the wood energy situation is discussed per country.
- We start with an inventory of the residues used for wood energy from forestry, agriculture and wood processing industry, followed by a summary of the energy consumption and production and the relevance of renewable energy.
- Energy prices, policies and regulations are shortly addressed as well.
- At the end of each chapter the barriers of wood energy utilisation are described and the most promising wood energy production chains are presented.
- In the final section of this extensive report we make a comparative analysis for the selected countries.
- We look at general indicators, such as GDP and CO2 emissions, and more specific bioenergy-related issues such as price ratios of different fuels, supply and demand of biofuels.
- Also in general the barriers of bioenergy for the various countries are compared and we try to identify common interests in a future pan-European bioenergy market.
Key innovative results:
- There are countries, where a formal wood energy market exists, including a pellet market such as in Finland, Sweden, and Germany.
- And other countries where the wood energy market is much less developed: in Greece, Portugal and to some extent Switzerland, and where the traditional use of wood is still predominant.
- And finally the two countries in transition, i.e. Bulgaria and Romania, which have high traditional use of wood energy and which have a distinctive and rapidly changing institutional setting.
Current status:
- Categories of woody biomass for fuel are logging residues generated from logging operations and industrial by-products generated by the forest industries during processing of timber, particleboard etc and re-circulated wood.
- Marketed wood fuels are logging residues, forest industry by-products, wood pellets and demolition (i.e. recycled) wood.
- Wood logs (e.g. split fire wood) are used as a direct fuel throughout Europe.
- While most traditional stoves and boilers show poor efficiency and high emissions, state of the art boilers and stoves are extremely efficient and clean-burning.
- Open fireplaces, although inefficient and polluting, are widely used for secondary heating or for lifestyle reasons.
Use potential:
- Recent developments of domestic heating equipment are focussing on fully automatic woodchip or pellet boilers that offer the same comfort as oil or gas burners.
- District heating using woodchips (and, in Denmark, straw) is significant in the Nordic countries, Austria and more recently also in parts of Germany and France.
- Significant technological progress has been made in combustion technology for these plants too.
- The use of wood residues in the wood processing industry is widespread and the equipment used can be considered mature (European Commission Atlas project).
Expected benefits:
- In general a switch from fossil fuels to wood energy leads to a decrease in negative environmental impacts of energy use.
- In addition wood energy exerts socio-economic co-benefits such as economic development, local availability of energy sources, improved viability of forest operations, retention of extra money within the community, greater community self-reliance on energy and enhanced self-esteem.
Dissemination:
Dissemination of the results have been carried out by 1) Using Echaine web-page, 2) Presentations at two by Echaine organised international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Presentations at national and international seminars and workshops, 4) Scientific papers.
Introduction:
There are several EU Directives supporting biomass based cogeneration: COM(97) 599; COM(2000) 769; Directive 2001/77/EC; Directive 2002/91/EU; Directive 2003/96/EU; Directive 2004/8/EC; SEC(2004) 547; COM (2004) 366.
There are also many climate-related initiatives since 1991, e.g. the first Community strategy to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and improve energy efficiency.
The second European Climate Change Programme was launched in 2005: COM(2000) 87; Directive 2003/87/EC; By the end of 2002, a large number of countries had ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
Combined heat and power production based on a steam turbine is of growing importance for small-scale applications. However, the lower limit for CHP plants is a nominal boiler capacity of about 5MWth due to the lower efficiency and the economy of scale.
Wood CHP units bigger than 100MWth are not suitable due to fuel supply uncertainty. Interesting technologies which are now under development are Stirling engines, hot air turbines, and Organic Rankine Cycles (ORC). The essential requirements for the selection of an appropriate CHP system are a high electrical efficiency and a well-tested technology.
Results:
Production cost for electricity varies between 15-30 Euro per MWh for a large scale production system:
- 60MWe and 120MWt, coal, wood and peat,
- 120MWe and 120MWt, natural gas, combi-cycle).
Corresponding figures for a small scale system are between 32 - 40 Euro per MWh based on the following aspects:
- Natural gas motor 5MWe and 6MWt,
- Wood and wood/peat 2MWe and 6MWt.
For both examples it is assumed that the heat price is 20 Euro per MWh. Fuel prices are the following: Natural gas: 13,5 Euro, Coal: 5,4 Euro, Wood: 10,0 Euro and Peat: 7,6 Euro per MWh. Capital cost for a biofuel boiler in effect range 2-50 MW is 650-325 Euro per MW. Corresponding figure for a pellet boiler in effect range (0.2-1 MW) is 600-250 Euro per MW. Capital cost to electricity varies between 1800 Euro per kWh to 5000 Euro per kWh within the range 1 to 20 MWe.
Key innovative results:
Drivers: Environmental benefits: Lower emissions than separate heat and centralized systems; Lower fossil energy consumption; Other benefits are, e.g. improved profitability, and reduced load on the grid. Barriers: There are technical, economic, market, institutional, political and legislative hindrances. Also there are social and environmental barriers.
Current status:
Traditionally wood has been used as fuel in grate or stoker type boilers. During the last decades fluidized-bed combustion has also been applied. The fluidized-bed technology offers a potential for high fuel flexibility and reduction of pollutants.
Grate and stoker type boilers are still used today when very problematic fuels are applied, or when the boiler units are small. Gasification technology seems to be mature enough to achieve commercialization status.
The main reason for considering gasification is that wood is converted into the more attractive process of burning gas fuel. In the small sized units woodgas is mostly used in a combustion engine whereas in larger units in a gas turbine or combined cycle plant.
Use potential:
On large scale applications, the operation of the Värnamo plant in Sweden, as well as the operation of the ARBRE plant in UK will be a serious step towards full commercialization of the IGCC technology. Co-firing of wood with fossil fuels in traditional thermal power plants is becoming increasingly popular.
As an alternative to conventional steam plants in the range 0.5 to 2MW, Organic Rankine Cycles (ORC) using a thermal oil boiler is also available. For small-scale wood power production, the externally fired Stirling engine technology is expected to enable economic power production in the future.
Expected benefits:
Biomass based CHP have lower emissions than separate heat and centralized power systems. Decreases fossil energy use. Reduces NOx, SO2 and CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Other benefits are, e.g. improved profitability for local companies, environmentally friendly technique, and reducing the load on the grid through distributed generation.
Modelling:
There are several calculation models available for CHP modelling: Techno- economic, Supply, Hybrid models, Economic, Cost of Energy Calculator, Optimization, Taxation, and Adoption and diffusion. In addition there are several support tools available for CHP planning: Decision support, A check list for basic actions, SWOT analysis, Spatial decision support and Decision support for emission trading planning.
Dissemination:
Dissemination of the results have been carried out by 1) Using Echaine web-page, 2) Presentations at two by Echaine organised international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Presentations at national and international seminars and workshops, 4) Scientific papers.
- Woody biomass is an energy source used regularly in some industries, mainly in the paper and pulp industry, using chips, sawdust and black liquor produced.
- A test region in south Portugal was identified, including regions Baixo Alentejo and Alentejo Litoral, representing about 1 385 thousand hectares.
- A GIS-based data base was developed based on military maps, statistical information, land use maps, chemical analysis, field trials and an evaluation of operational costs.
- A survey was made over the residues produced in agriculture and the main species producing woody biomass were identified.
- The wood chains identified were the logs and small branches produced in prunnings, mainly in the olive trees and vines.
Results:
- The main wood chain in Portugal is forestry, where about 1 173 dry ktonnes are produced every year, but only 16% is effectively used for energetic purposes.
- The results show that the production of residues in the perennial crops is around 677 dry tonnes per year, but only 11% is used for energetic purposes.
- The total potential biomass production in the region Baixo Alentejo and Alentejo is around 0,78 dry Mtonnes per year, including biomass residues produced in forestry and in perennial crops.
Key innovative features of the results:
- GIS technology is today available for broad audience. There are different distributors of software and there are also open source software available.
- Spatially distributed data is still exclusive and in many cases not distributed for free. High licence fees are the main barrier to increase the use of GIS for analysis.
Current status:
- Counties presenting larger potential are located in the coastal areas, mainly because of residues produced in cork oak and eucalyptus stands. County of Odemira presents larger potential, where the available potential is above 2000 TJ/year.
- Nevertheless, some inner counties present also large available biomass production potential, mainly because of pruning of olive trees and vines in vine yards.
- The results show that the total potential of biomass residues inside the region Baixo Alentejo Alentejo Litoral is around 13 562 TJ per year.
- If we take in consideration that a part of it has is used firewood, we can conclude that 7 436 TJ per year are available for other energy applications.
Expected benefits:
- Over the last ten years, the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have been largely improved, allowing more accurate analysis.
- Using GIS technology considerable improvements have been reached in biomass potential estimations and in optimisation of the logistics chain.
Dissemination:
Dissemination of results from this work package has been carried out by: 1) Publishing the results at Echaine web-page, 2) Partners presentations at two by Echaine consortium organised international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Partners presentations at national and international seminars and work shops, 4) Scientific papers.
- This work organized within the WP6, was tackled at first by conducting a theoretical consideration of environmentally relevant aspects which occur along the energy wood chain within the energy plant.
- The spectrum of consideration includes the actual conversion process, up- and downstream as well as auxiliary processes.
- Based upon this set of information a questionnaire was developed (cf. Report on Environmental Aspects D19 /SCHRADER et al. 2005/).
- By means of the questionnaire a survey was conducted in order to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the current status of energy plants throughout Europe.
- Within these nine countries 45 energy plant operators were cooperative in providing data, which presentation and discussion is subject of this Report on Emissions/Reduced Emissions D18.
Results:
- The interviewed energy plants are mainly new (< 10 years), equipped with a small and medium sized combustion units.
- They function either as decentralized energy units (< 20 MW) implemented into wood-working production plants, or to a smaller extent as industry scaled energy plants (> 100 MW), selling steam and power to clients.
- Main focus of the survey was directed to emissions with the result, that almost all energy plants would comply with e.g. German limit values.
- Here, especially newer energy plants show no problems.
- Two of three energy plants have installed a flue gas treatment for dust reduction, some insert additives to reduce NOx, while over 90% have applied water treatment facilities.
- Only very few energy plants emit noise to a level higher than the location specific value, again with regard to German standards.
- To high noise emissions are not process immanent to energy plants as they can easily be counteracted by effective containment / isolation etc.
- According to fuel proportion, ash residues accumulate to 3 wt.% of fuel input, being very low compared to solid fossil fuels.
- Concerning the output parameters, their values e.g. the rate of plant utilization show a wide variation among the energy plants included in the study, mainly due to application characteristics and expressed in different maintenance periods and downs times correlating to wood-working applications.
Key innovative results:
- Compared with fossil fuels, the environmental compatibility of the thermal utilization of energy wood fares far better.
- Hence, the goal is to study relevant environmental aspects of the utilization of wood for energy in conversion plants.
- Relevance of individual processes in thermal utilisation of wood is analyzed and evaluated including delivery, preparation, storage of biomass and ash disposal / ash recovery.
Current status:
- Almost all of the plants utilize a mixture of residual and waste woody biomass with a net calorific heat value between 10 and 15 MJ/kg.
- The generally used combustion technology is grate firing, predominantly executed as pusher grate.
- Other technologies, such as fluidized bed and pulverized combustion, are sporadically found too.
- Gasification of woody biomass was not present at the survey, despite of the high degree of conversion efficiency. Its technology still needs further development to reach more operating experience.
- Just half of all energy plants are constructed as combined heat and power plants.
- The investigation of process losses and power consumption by auxiliary drives brought up values comparable to conventional energy plants.
Use potential:
- In the future, number decentralized energy plants using woody biomass will increase.
- Additionally, an increasing energetic utilization of wood in energy plants (> 50 MW) is going to be encountered in regions with vast resources (e.g. Sweden, Finland, Russia).
- In the medium time range perspective the utilization of gasification gas in engines will be realized with on-going plant technology development, while the long-term utilization of fuel gas seems achievable in high efficiency fuel cells, thus consequently leading to lower emission.
Expected benefits:
- It could be shown, that the energetic utilization of woody biomass is becoming more and more important to provide process heat and power, mainly in decentralized CHP energy plants.
- Although, predominantly encountered in wood-working countries like Sweden and Finland, energy plants extend their capability of firing different types of woody biomass, and therefore, become attractive in other regions too.
- Their compliance with legislative emission regulations is achieved due to applying state-of-the-art combustion technology.
- They are characterized by high energy conversion efficiency at affordable investment costs.
- Energy plant operators relay on a secured fuel supply (< 50 km) under cost effective conditions (substituting high priced fossil fuels).
Current status:
- A new energy system in this case pellets needs support, e.g. research, education, training, entrepreneurship and powerful marketing.
- There is also a need of several large scale producers to be involved, which give the pellet business a trustworthy/sustainable image even in the future.
- Also, there is uncertainty of the future energy prices.
Use potential:
- Pellet production is being internationalised during the recent years, new factories rise, e.g. around the Baltic.
- A positive market development of pellets is supposed to continue in the future. But, there is a question of the availability of cheap raw materials in the future.
Expected benefits:
- Pellets need to become a product, which satisfies consumers needs (compare with heating oil).
- To reach this the following aspects need to be taken into consideration:
-- Consumers need to find pellets as a competitive fuel with good fuel properties.
-- There is a need of standards and norms.
-- It is also evident that the pellet producers and machine / device manufacturers need to be active in disseminating relevant and trustworthy information.
Dissemination:
Dissemination of presented plan has been carried out by using the Echaine web-page. Future dissemination is going to be carried out at national and international seminars and workshops.
This work presents a general discussion on costs of wood fuel production and utilisation. Second, fuel energy price developments for ECHAINE countries are discussed and compared. Third, determinants of energy wood prices are discussed at a theoretical level. Finally, results from two European surveys among wood energy using and non-using plants are presented and synthesised.
Results:
- The firms included in the ECHAINE survey had very large differences in wood energy outputs.
- The companies involved were not active on the international electricity market except a few Swedish ones.
- The Finnish and Swedish companies in the survey started to use wood energy
commercially more than a decade earlier than Bulgarian, Swiss and German companies. Some Romanian and Portuguese companies have a long history of wood fuel utilisation as well.
- The Finnish, Swiss and Swedish plants using wood fuels seem to obtain their fuel inputs from a wider range of suppliers than the Portuguese and German managers.
- When the survey was undertaken, most managers considered wood fuels to be the cheapest fuels
- Over time most managers have experienced relatively stable wood fuel prices, except for about half of the Scandinavian managers.
Key innovative findings:
- Managers of non-wood fuel companies seem to be more optimistic of the conditions of banks to finance renewable energy investments.
- The manager of companies which use wood fuels are more pessimistic than managers of non-wood fuel using companies about the impact of future emission taxes and certificates on the profitability of wood energy.
- Competition for wood fuels tends to lead to higher wood fuel prices.
- Most positive about the low costs of wood fuels were the managers that highly appreciated the fuel security of wood fuels.
- Large wood energy firms exhibit lower labour intensities than small wood energy firms.
- Statistics of wood fuel utilisation at the national level are not representative of how managers actually experience the competition at the local level.
Several discrepancies were detected between:
- Price perception at local level and national price development.
- Uncertainty with respect to availability of wood fuels at the local level and availability and abundance of wood fuels and forest at the national level.
- Perception of managers of wood fuel versus non-wood fuel companies.
- Discrepancy between uncertainty experienced and wood fuel availability.
- Local price perception and perceived fuel uncertainty.
- Competition experienced and intention for future wood fuel utilisation.
Expected results:
Examples of each of the four determinants of prices of wood fuels and wood energy:
- Historical development of prices, supply and demand: Rather as a result of large competition in the local wood fuel market, and contrary to what would be expected based on their large forestry abundance, the greatest uncertainty concerning availability and long term delivery of wood fuels in the long run was felt in Finland. The least uncertainty was felt in Switzerland and Romania.
- Policies: direct political support can lead to significant cost reductions for the firm. The government may subsidise the complete or part of the installation, as of the occurred in Switzerland, or may not subsidise at all, as in Romania (see also ECHAINE Deliverable 23).
- Socio-economic and cultural values: Good management of the relations between the manager and relevant stakeholders can lead to significant cost reductions (see also ECHAINE Deliverable D21).
- Extent of competition at national and regional level: Competition from other plants, mostly district heating or CHP plants, for wood fuels was felt strongly in Finland, and to a large extent in Germany and Sweden as well.
Dissemination:
Dissemination of the results have been carried out by 1) Using Echaine web-page, 2) Presentations at two by Echaine organised international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Presentations at national and international seminars and workshops, 4) Scientific papers.
Introduction:
The aim of this work package is to:
- Present a technical description of a web based query tool for the ECHAINE project, - Report the descriptions and solutions for the ECHAINE final GIS Version Tool (Software).
Results - Query tool: - The query tool offers on-line access through the internet to a GIS system that contains data about energy wood production and its conversion to energy. Through the query tool decision makers can base their decisions regarding energy on the results of a multi-dimensional analysis of diverse energy chain options from an economic, market, policy, environmental, technological and socioeconomical perspectives.
The query tool requires three elements:
- Network Architecture,
- A GIS solution,
- A database.
The network architecture establishes how the different components of the query tool communicate with each other.
The GIS will provide a service to present data in maps, in order to be able to make a spatial analysis. The database will contain all information about energy wood production and its conversion to energy. Results - Final GIS version.
The category of the deliverable 33 is software. The aim of this document is to report the descriptions and solutions for the ECHAINE project concerning to the Final GIS Version Tool. This tool is an instrument to manage the data of the work packages of the project, based on the web technology and on the GIS technology to simplify the access to the information, and to get an overview of the situation in the European countries about the energy wood. The capability of the GIS technology to show results in a graphical way will be useful to identify the data and to analyse the results.
On the other hand the web technology will allow sharing the data from different sources of information and years in the different European countries.
Key innovative results:
The final GIS version uses an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a base to evaluate a multi-criteria analysis. - The base of this analysis is a questionnaire with one hundred questions developed within the work package 7. - The analysis is based on experiences of stakeholders and decision makers about energy wood in 10 European countries. - Nevertheless, the same study could be easily applied to other European countries. - The analysis is available via web on the private area of the project web site, and covers the most relevant socio-economic aspects of energy wood, and all the technological aspects are based on open source technologies. Current status: - The web application is running. - The application is based on open source resources - The basic structure is flexible and it could be modified for different purposes.
- Certain part of woody biomass could be used as fuel that can provide energy to the industrial sector, heat and power sector, commercial purposes or domestic use.
- Conventional forestry systems are defined here as natural forests and plantations in which biomass for energy can be considered as a by-product alongside other benefits and values such as timber production, environmental consideration, and biodiversity.
Results:
- Ten energy wood production chains were identified in the project.
- These wood production chains are in use in European Union countries and Romania and Bulgaria.
- Total production costs for energy wood vary between 2.2 5.4 Euro per GJ for the most efficient production chains i.e. flagship production chains, including the following systems:
-- Bundles from logging residues;
-- Wood chips from logging residues;
-- Loose logging residues at European level;
-- Whole tree chips from early thinning.
Key innovative results:
- Studying and comparing the most promising ECHAINEs in European countries, has indicated two factors:
-- Different methodologies prevail to characterize the chains; no common terminology exists.
-- Large differences in geographical regions and accessibility (including seasonal accessibility).
- The following main cost influencing factors could be identified as important:
-- Scale of operation has a major impact on the procurement cost,
-- Full employment of machinery and area availability of energy wood are the most important factors,
-- Large scale use enables use of capital intensive and effective systems based on chipping at plant,
-- In small / medium scale use road side chipping based on technologies are suitable.
- We can consider that there are large energy wood quantities available with today´s best technique and with today´s average price level.
- In the long-range perspective these figures will probably increase considerably, due primarily to the technical development, and provided that sufficient demand is there.
- Another reason to this development is that the productivity in forest operations and in wood fuel utilization has increased considerably during the last 20 years.
Current status:
- Energy wood can be produced from logging operations concerning branches and tops, i.e. logging residues mainly from regeneration fellings, and can also be produced by tree-section systems.
- The tree section method enables to produce pulpwood and fuel through large-scale operations, and has been applied more in Sweden and Finland though at declining rate.
- Other methods used in Sweden and Finland are multi-tree handling (MTH), felling heads for cost effective felling in pre-commercial and first thinning stands; new forwarder variants for heavier payloads; chipper operating on strip roads; and bundling of logging residues, e.g. to cut haulage costs and to increase efficiency of chipping.
- Methods for producing energy wood from logging residues originating from regeneration fellings are terminal chipping, end-use chipping and roadside and terrain chipping.
- In Finland, Sweden and also Germany, more commercial methods for road-side and terrain chipping have recently been developed and applied.
- In Bulgaria a major part of operations are performed in the cutting area or in a temporary timber yard.
- More simple machines are being used, because there is a lack of roads and the terrain is mountainous. Large potential exists, if these factors are overcome.
Use potential:
- Competition with other energy sources, national energy policies and local opinion constitute major barriers to increase bioenergy use.
- Increased national self-sufficiency is a policy goal for many countries.
Expected benefits:
- Harvesting methods show high variations and are adapted to the environment.
- Energy production based on woody biomass from conventional forestry systems conforms to international agreements and initiatives at different levels that promote sustainability.
- The optimal harvesting element in the chain might therefore involve traditional techniques as more advanced techniques may not always work, especially in wintertime, or may not be cost effective.
- The methods of harvesting also vary depending on the type of residues, e.g. logging residues from wood harvesting operations or residues from arboriculture.
Dissemination:
Dissemination of the results have been carried out by 1) Using Echaine web-page, 2) Partners presentations at two by Echaine organised international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Partners presentations at national and international seminars and workshops, 4) Scientific papers.
The aim of this work package (8)is to estimate available quantities of energy wood in a medium time horizon (about 10 years), and discuss aspects which influence the potential in a long range perspective (about 50 years).
Woody biomass and energy crops already contribute substantially to cover energy demands in many parts of the world, including Europe. Biomass is used to substitute fossil fuels, e.g., in heat supply and electricity generation. Presently, the utilisation of these materials, mainly forest and logging residues, is low, compared with the estimated potentials. A reason for this is the existence of different technical and non-technical barriers.
Results:
- It was found that the total potential of different biomass fuels in Europe is about 9 EJ/a.
- The current use is about 2 EJ/a. This means that about 20% of the total resources are in use today.
- The practically available annual biomass fuel quantity in Europe is about 5 EJ/a.
Key innovative features of the result:
- Biomass, especially woody biomass could contribute significantly to mitigation of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, mainly CO2 from fossil fuel combustion.
- The rapidly growing markets for energy wood and other renewables in Europe during recent years have already raised questions about their influence on the environment.
- An important aspect is the assessment of these potentials in the appraisal of these resources, which is included in the setting of targets and limits for their practical utilisation.
- Extraction of more material from forest gives greater intensity and a higher risk of impact.
- All these impacts are manageable with fairly straightforward measures that are generally an extension of good conventional forestry practice.
- In most areas of the world, the current biomass use is clearly below the available potential. Only in Asia does current use exceed available potential, i. e. non-sustainable biomass use. Therefore, increased biomass use for energy purposes is possible in most countries.
- Therefore, a possible alternative is to cover the future demand for renewable energy by increased utilisation of forest residues and residues from the wood-processing industry.
Use potential:
- According to the Commission's White Paper, the overall aim is to double the share of renewable energy from 6 % to 12 % of the total energy consumption in the EU by year 2010.
- Regarding to this White Paper, a major part of additional renewable energy needed to set target could come from biomass.
- This means that, additionally, over 160 million m3 of woody biomass per year (1 EJ/a) could be used for energy in the EU.
- Biomass currently covers approximately 14% of the world's final energy consumption and 6,8% of the European Unions (EU25) final energy consumption. The corresponding share of all renewables is about 10,3% in the EU(25).
- The share of wood in the EU (25) energy supply (wood as fuel in households and wood as fuel in industry and power plants) is about 50% of all renewables. This means that the share of wood in the EU(25) energy system is about 5,3%.
Current status:
- Estimation of total energy wood quantities is rather straight forward process and requires information of forests, forest yied and forest land etc. This information is in many cases available from national forestry statistics.
- Estimation of practically available energy wood quantity is more problementic. This factor is depended on information of ecological, technical and economical restictions due to procurement system chain.
- There is also lack of spatial forest information.
Conclusions: The total quantity is in most cases possible to estimate but the practically available quantity is still very difficult.
Expected benefits:
- The global benefit of displacing fossil fuel with modern wood fuel use is clear, with life cycle analyses showing that energy wood supply systems are near-neutral in terms of emissions of greenhouse gas CO2 to the atmosphere.
- The general conclusion of the main results is that there are a number of factors which have a positive influence of the potential energy wood supply in the future.
- Energy wood is going to be an important complementary product to the forest industry in the future.
- Wood as fuel is going to provide an important part of energy to make the sustainable society possible in the future.
Dissemination:
- Results of this part of the work have been disseminated several ways: 1) By using Echaine web-page, 2) Partners presentations in two own international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Partners presentations in national and international seminars, workshops and conferences, 4) Scientific publications.
Energy wood includes all types of biofuels derived directly and indirectly from trees and shrubs grown in forest and non-forest lands, as biomass derived from civilcultural activities as well as industrial by-products derived from primary and secondary forest industries.
- Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a grandle-to-grave approach for assessing industrial systems.
- LCA enables the estimation of cumulative environmental impacts resulting from all stages in the product life.
- In the frame of this study an LCA of energy wood chain has been chosen.
- The system boundary of the LCA has been defined from the collection of recovered wood, to preparation, transportation and finally combustion of the wood fuel.
- The functional unit was set to 1 MWhth produced from a defined categories of energy wood, such as recovered wood, clean wood and coal / lignite.
Result:
- The Life Cycle Analysis of the energy wood chain has shown that the benefits in the global warming impact category are the most important result by the combustion of wood for energy utilization, while the whole process, from the collection till the combustion of wood, imposes the most negative influence on the impact category of acidification, followed by the eutrophication and the human toxicity.
- In addition, the use of wood for energy production reduces almost 0.1 kg SO2 eq. per produced MWhth, compared to the production of the same amount of energy by burning diesel oil.
- In the impact category of eutrophication the dominant pollutants are nitrogen oxides (NOx).
- Concerning the human health, heavy metals, benzol and dioxine/furans are the dominant components.
- The contribution of the emissions during the collection of energy wood in urban areas is the dominant stage concerning air pollution.
- The traffic conditions in urban areas, as well as the continuously starting and stopping of the tractors for the collection of energy wood results in increased fuel consumption.
- This causes increased pollution levels compared to driving in a highway.
Key innovative features of the result:
- The extensive use of recovered wood can stimulate the market and create a significant number of permanent jobs, especially in rural areas.
- For an extensive use of energy wood it is necessary to create a whole chain which includes selection, preparation, transportation and finally combustion of the wood fuels.
- All these intermediate stages of wood utilization for energy purposes are connected with consumption of energy and materials, or in other words are connected with pressure on the environment.
- As environmental awareness increases, industries and businesses have started to assess how their activities affect the environment.
- Society has become concerned about the issues of natural resource depletion and environmental degradation.
Use potential:
- The annual amount of recovered wood in the European Union countries is estimated to be 50-100 million tons.
- This amount of recovered wood can be reused, used as raw material in wood processing industries, or disposed in sanitary landfills.
- At the same time, this amount has an energy content of about 750-1.350 PJ, depended on its moisture content.
- Thus, the use of recovered wood for energy production could contribute significantly to two major policy goals of the European Union.
- On the one hand, such use would contribute to doubling the share of renewable energy in the
- European primary energy supply to 12% by 2010 and on the other hand, being virtually CO2 neutral energy source, it would help meet the reduction of EU-GHG emissions as declared in the Kyoto protocol.
Expected benefits.
- The environmental benefits of the substitution diesel with energy wood are about 3x102 kg-CO2 eq. per produced MWhth.
- In contrasts, the substitution of diesel fuel consist to the increase of other emissions such as carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4).
- The use of low-NOx burners, the optimization of the combustion conditions as well as the use of advanced combustion systems such as fluidized beds, can contribute significantly to the reduction of NOx emissions.
- The use of hybrid cars or cars driving by electricity could be an effective solution for the reduction of both emissions and noise level during the process of energy wood collection.
Current status:
- The LCA analysis method is operational and it is used widely in different areas.
Dissemination:
- Dissemination of the results have been carried out by 1) Using Echaine web-page, 2) Partners presentations at two by Echaine organised international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Partners presentations at national and international seminars and workshops, 4) Scientific papers.
- Results from the socio-economic survey among the managers of wood energy using companies have been used to create a new GIS tool.
- Based on multi-criteria analysis, the user of this tool can select any of the categories e.g. European policy and a map will be created to visualise the results.
Results:
- From deliverables D20, D21, D22 and the results from this particular deliverable, the following general characteristics of the wood energy market are identified:
Market:
- Wood energy utilisation in Europe is very heterogeneous
- The wood energy markets have different historical developments
- Extent of competition at national and regional level.
- Scandinavian countries have two distinct characteristics of the wood energy market: high national and regional political influence and high participation in local decision-making
Stakeholders:
- Many stakeholders are involved, mostly at the local, but also the regional and national level
- It seems in some countries the interests of stakeholders in the wood energy market are more aligned than in others
- Managers of wood energy utilising companies have an active and versatile role.
Socio-economic factors:
- Socio-economic and cultural values: Good management of the relations between the manager and relevant stakeholders can lead to significant cost reductions
- Non-economic arguments to adopt wood energy utilisation are socio-economic arguments, envi-ronmental concerns, community participation, publicity
Wood fuel supply:
- The supplier relationships vary widely.
- Wood fuel supply uncertainty is very much a local matter, but can nevertheless be influenced by regional and national policies as well
Locality:
- Price perception and price formation can be very much a local matter: wood fuel prices might dif-fer locally, according to existing local competition, wood fuels availability and other conditions.
Key innovative results:
Differences in perception between wood fuel using and non-wood fuel using companies managers:
- There is a difference in perception between managers of companies that have just started to use wood fuels, managers that have never used and those have been using for a long time.
- Managers of companies that have just started to use replied more positively about the technical and economical feasibility of wood fuel utilisation.
- The managers from the firms that had just started to use wood fuels, tend to see the transportation, labour, capital and distribution costs as no obstacle.
- Managers of non-wood fuel companies seem to be more optimistic of the conditions of banks to finance renewable energy investments.
- The manager of companies which use wood fuels are more pessimistic.
Current status:
- Policies that have an impact on wood fuel and wood energy utilisation rates are very diverse.
- The policies can try to influence absolute and relative prices of wood fuels, investment costs, operation costs, or user costs.
- In many countries no specific wood energy policies exist and wood energy utilisation is more indirectly influenced by for example climate change policies and general renewable energy programs.
- Be-sides the policies that directly and indirectly influence wood fuel and wood energy utilisation there are the policies that hamper or inhibit wood fuel and wood energy production and use.
Use potential:
- In this deliverable the main obstacles for wood fuel and wood energy utilisation are derived from a survey among managers of wood fuel using and non-wood fuel using companies.
- From these results it is derived why some managers may use or produce bioenergy even though it is not considered economically feasible (by some) and why others do opt not to use or produce bioenergy even though it is considered economically feasible (by some).
Dissemination:
Dissemination of the results have been carried out by 1) Using Echaine web-page, 2) Presentations at two by Echaine organised international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Presentations at national and international seminars and workshops, 4) Scientific papers.
The objective of this work is to present an exploitation plan for a part of the project results, i.e. results from the WP11 - Software development.
The result to be exploited are:
- A data management approach
- An analysis solution that offers a GIS representation for easier analysis of the project results.
Current status:
Within the web site of the Echaine project (http://www.echaine.org), it is possible to find this development carried out by the partner ATOS. The GIS application is a module of the web-page.
Expected benefits:
- We believe that in the future the software market in this area will be a mixture of proprietary and open source code.
- This is why this tool is an open source result.
Introduction:
The aim of this part of the work is to make an energy analysis of energy wood production and utilisation. Energy wood chains concerning logging residue recovery are used as a working examples. Templates for information gathering and a checklist for calculations are included. These examples could be used as bases for further comparison between different supply chains for energy wood in different countries.
These methodological aspects and findings are used for further analysis of energy wood supply systems within the ECHAINE project. The analysis is made taking into account the direct energy use (diesel fuel and electricity for raw material handling). Three (3) supply system are chosen for the analysis.
These supply systems are:
A) Bundles of logging residues,
B) Wood chips of logging residues,
C)Loose logging residues.
Results:
Differences in direct energy consumption and EROI between the supply chains A, B and C were detected. The difference was between 7-17%.
The production chain A (Bundles of logging residues) was found more energy efficient than production chains B (Wood chips of logging residues) and C (Loose logging residues) when considering the direct energy use. The calculated energy return of investment (based on direct energy use) was at the level of 43 50 (A = 50, B = 47, and C = 43).
Key innovative features of the result:
- Only about 2,0 - 2,5% of the total energy output is used by the production chains (used as direct fossil fuel or electricity), when considering utilisation of logging residues in Scandinavian conditions (i.e. in Sweden and Finland).
- The results from an energy analysis could also be used to point out energy intensive / energy consuming parts of the production chain, i.e. to give valuable information about the technical development needs.
Use potential:
The following conclusions could be made from the presented study:
- The production chain A (Bundles of logging residues) is an energy efficient chain due to high density of the bundles. This fact makes it possible to maximise the load capacity of the machines.
- The production chain B (Wood chips of logging residues) takes a middle position. It is less energy efficient that the chain A but it is more efficient than the chain C (Loose logging residues.
- The production chain C (Loose logging residues) is an energy consuming operation there almost all parts of the chain are energy consuming. The main reason to that is the low density of logging residues, which makes the chain operations less energy efficient.
- Crushing is an efficient way to comminute the material (both loose residues and bundles). Road transport without return transport is an energy consuming operation. There is a need for better logistic planning to avoid such empty transports.
Expected benefits:
- The energy wood production chains and heat and power production using energy wood are evaluated by the means of energy input / output, i.e. in the terms of energy return investment (EROI).
- This analysis method means that all activities (generated by the nature and humans) can be translated to energy units.
- Using an accounting / calculation method the supply chain activities are calculated using this measurement unit.
- The sum of all the necessary activities for a chain representing, e.g., energy wood utilisation for heat and power purposes is calculated.
- This method is often used as an additional evaluation method to traditional analysis methods, e.g. economic analysis.
Dissemination: Dissemination of the results have been carried out by: 1) Presention of the deliverables at the Echaine web-page, 2) Partners presentations at two by Echaine consortium arranged international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Partners presentations at several national and international seminars and workshops, 4) Scientific papers.
This report identifies the main environmental implications of wood fuel harvesting operations in Europe, drawing on published scientific literature.
Results:
- For example, nutrients can be returned to sites, including via wood ash.
- In common with forestry in general, a balance needs to be struck between economic, technical, ecological etc. goals.
- Particular attention is needed in southern Europe, where many forests are fragile with limited production potential and high ecological value.
- However, extracting biomass for energy in southern European forests offers a way to reduce fire hazard, which is a major increasing threat.
Key innovative features of the results:
- All these mentioned impacts are manageable with fairly straightforward measures that are generally an extension of good conventional forestry practice.
Use potential:
- Bioenergy, including wood fuel, is the main contributor to renewable energy in Europe and the sector is growing.
- There is a lack of information and guidance for forest managers harvesting biomass for energy
Current status:
- Extracting more residues causes that nutrient export from the forest site is substantially higher, there is more traffic on site so greater risk of physical impact, there are additional noisy activities, there are risks of harm to water courses, there may be some ecological impact with sources of dead wood removed.
- Extraction of more material gives greater intensity and higher risk of impact.
Expected benefits:
- The global benefit of displacing fossil fuel with modern wood fuel use is clear, with life cycle analyses showing that bioenergy systems are near-neutral in terms of emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 to the atmosphere.
- Practical experience and research has shown that fuel wood systems can be operated across Europe that are locally sustainable.
Dissemination:
Dissemination of the results have been carried out by 1) Using Echaine web-page, 2) Presentations at two by Echaine organised international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Presentations at national and international seminars and workshops, 4) Scientific papers.
- This work addresses socio-economic aspects in the context of energy wood production chains.
- It is shown that the term socio-economics is not used consistently in European studies on renewable energy use, and that the angle taken to study socio-economic issues depends on the disciplinary origin of the scientist/s undertaking the study.
Results of the stakeholder analysis:
- The boundary conditions that surround an energy innovation in a firm are not static, but are dynamic in terms of interactions among the stakeholders.
- A change in values might be needed among the different groups, rather than one group of stakeholders, that are involved in renewable energy innovations (e.g. if the local community, financial institutions, governmental bodies, suppliers of resources, all have parallel values to the manager, it helps the implementation and operation process greatly).
- When selecting optimal policy bundles based on experiences from other countries, the embeddedness of the stakeholders in their culture may interfere: Are the interactions between the main stakeholders, i.e. with the community, government, financial institutions and supplier of resources (if applicable), similar or dissimilar to the situation in the home country?
Results from the survey:
- Many wood energy utilising firms and their managers play an active role in creating support in their local community and participate in local politics. Policy makers could actively stimulate these developments.
- Economic motivation is often assumed to be the dominant factor to the individual to adopt an innovation, however the interviewed managers indicated several non-economic arguments for wood fuel utilisation:
- Willingness to use wood from local forest even if it is not the cheapest
- Environmental concerns
- Local community concerns
- Marketing strategy of companies
Key innovative results:
- We hope that the socioeconomic analysis could help policy makers in their decision-making:
-- Increase in understanding and interpretation of socio-economic issues, including attention for cultural influences.
- The latter has significant consequences when there is interest for adapting policies from different countries.
-- Stimulate socio-economic analysis and fieldwork in energy innovative projects, including following up in the implementation and operation phase after a technology has been adopted
-- Start dialogue with the various stakeholders to improve the understanding of socio-economic impacts further and disseminate information.
-- To implement policies to create a business environment that nurtures renewable energy by improving the interaction between the various stakeholders towards energy innovations, for example by training of managers or government personnel.
-- Stimulate transparent price formation.
Current status:
- Even though international technology transfer is common nowadays, its implementation might not always be as successful as expected.
- Rogers acknowledges that what happens after diffusion is just as important for the succeeding or failing of innovations, as the diffusion process itself, however it has received much less attention (Rogers 1995).
- One reason is that it is more complex to study what happens after a technology or idea has spread to different people and organizations.
- The stakeholder approach with identification of the main relationships, and their values, is one way to obtain information about what happens after a technology has become installed.
Use potential:
- The inclusion of socio-economic analysis in energy innovation planning and assessment can help to anticipate non-technical obstacles, not only during the initial adoption phase, but also in the implementation and sustained operation phase.
- The implementation and subsequent operation phase have often been overlooked in renewable energy studies.
Expected benefits:
- For example in the survey a good relationship with the wood residue supplier(s) was found to be of crucial importance for all managers in all countries.
- However the way in which the managers dealt with the suppliers, and how they perceived and overcame problems in wood fuel quality, and how they valued their cooperation now and in future, differed widely.
- The results of the stakeholder analysis and survey point out several issues that could be of interest for policy makers, who are involved in the promotion of renewable energy innovations.
Dissemination:
Dissemination of the results have been carried out by 1) Using Echaine web-page, 2) Presentations at two by Echaine organised international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Presentations at national and international seminars and workshops, 4) Scientific papers.
Introduction:
The website consists of a public area with
- General information about the project and the consortium.
- A public forum.
- A public list of references (publications) and documents.
- Events and links about bio-energy.
- Frequent asked questions section (FAQs).
There is also a private area (protected by username/password) with:
- Management the access to the private area.
- Detailed Information about the partners.
- A private forum.
- A private list of references (publications) and documents, and an upload section.
- A private planning tool to plan meeting, short terms and deliverables.
- Access to the first prototype.
Dissemination:
- This website is very important for the dissemination of the Echaine results and for receiving feedback from the community working on energy wood.
Key innovative results:
- A web GIS application is implemented at the web pages.
- It is aimed for analysis of energy wood issues.
- There is also an analysis tool for socio-economic analysis implemented.
Expected results:
- Web applications can be used for other projects as well and that way be considered an exploitable result of Echaine. Current status:
- The web-page has been active in 3 years now.
- The structure is well defined and flexible.
- It is possible to modify and ad modules for future needs.
- This work package deals with emergy analysis at: 1) Country level and 2) process level emergy analysis of energy wood production and utilisation chains.
- Methodology for emergy evaluations at country level and for process level are presented.
- Three examples for emergy evaluations at country level are included:
-- Emergy evaluation of economy in Sweden for year 2002, by Hagström & Nilsson, 2003.
-- Emergy evaluation of economy in Bulgaria for year 2001, by Markov, 2004.
-- Emergy evaluation of economy in USA for year 2000, by Rodrigues, (2002).
Also the most widely used energy wood production chains in Sweden (ChainA: Bundles of logging residues, ChainB: Wood chips of logging residues, and ChainC: Loose logging residues)combined with a virtual energy wood utilisation plant for CHP production.
- The emergy evaluation procedures are detailed and the sources of information are documented. MS-Excel workbooks are elaborated, these can be used as information-gathering templates and as tools for easier preparation of all emergy evaluation tables.
Results:
- The main results are the transformities of the main products of the investigated chains standing biomass at the forest site, harvested wood at the forest site, wood chips at the utility site (ready for conversion) and heat and power ready for distribution from the utility site.
- All chains starts from one and the same from alder and spruce forest site and eneds with one and the same CHP plant.
- The transformities of the products of chain A in seJ/J are, respectively: 9496.05, 16247.48, 19697.86, and 32937.20.
- For the products of chain B these transformities are, respectively 9496.05, 16247.48, 23405.03, and 37547.29.
- For the products of chain C these transformities are, respectively 9496.05, 16247.48, 19066.23, and 31879.34.
Key innovative features:
- The transformities of the products of the investigated chains are compared as well with the transformities of the fossil fuels at the production site: coal (48720 seJ/J), natural gas (58464), crude petroleum (67536), and refined petroleum products (80472).
- It is obvious that even the final product of chain B - heat and power produced from alder spruce chips - has lower transformity than the transformity of the most efficient fossil fuel (coal) at the production site.
- Emergy analysis is a new method for analysis and understanding of the combined work of the nature and the society.
- It provides a more holistic basis for evaluation of the real value of all economic results of human activities, products and services, as well as all material resources and energy sources from nature used by mankind.
- It provides important information, which might influence the human behaviour and relationship to Earth and Earth s resources.
Current status:
- The emergy analysis provides information on how effective the economy is, and helps the policy makers to understand, from a holistic point of view, the impact of their decisions on the environment.
- Woody biomass contains available energy - potential energy, which can do work.
- By burning of woody biomass a small part of the energy of the chemical bounds of its substances is used to form the products of combustion and the rest is released and transferred into heat
- The available energy of woody biomass can be measured in energy units, usually in Joules (J).
- In contrast, emergy is a measure of the energy that has already been used to build up woody biomass.
Use potential:
- Emergy is a record of all types of previously used energy, which is only a small part of the energy bound in a product. Emergy estimates the magnitude of the work involved in the production of that material.
- Emergy is evaluated usually in emjoules (emJ) or solar emjoules (seJ).
- The quotient of a product's emergy content divided by its energy content is defined as its transformity.
- The unit of transformity is seJ/J, so the transformity is not a dimensionless ratio.
- The more energy transformations there are contributing to a product, the higher is its transformity.
- A unit of woody biomass has a higher transformity level than the sun and rain that contributed to produce it.
Expected benefits:
- It is clear advantages of biofuels for production of heat and power in comparison with the fossil fuels, in addition to the neutral CO2 load to the environment they provide a more efficient way for utilisation of the energy supplied to our civilisation for free from the Nature solar insolation, gravitation and deep Earth heat.
Dissemination:
The results are disseminated by 1) Using the Echaine web-page, 2) Partners presentations at by Echaine organised international workshops (Bulgaria and Russia), 3) Partners presentations at national and international seminars and workshops, 4) Scientific papers.
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