The importance of biomass as an energy source

The European Union's White Paper defines strategies for the use of renewable sources of energy, and therefore also for biomass. In addition to that, most countries have ratified international agreements such as the reduction targets of Toronto and Kyoto, which resulted in an increased use of biomass at both national and EU level in order to reach these targets. The starting position for the use of biomass in Austria is very good; biomass currently covers 12% of Austria's primary energy supply.

Due to the nature of its landscape Austria has always been a land of forests, which still cover 40% of its area. This is the result of a foresighted policy which introduced legislation ensuring a sustainable use of Austrian forests at the turn of this century. Before that, iron and steel production and the growing population led to an increasingly dramatic exploitation of forests in the 18th and 19th centuries. Erosion, floods and avalanches were the consequences that finally led to strict regulations to prevent deforestation. At the same time the switch to coal as a new energy carrier took place, leading to a steady decline in wood use for energy purposes.

Since the mid 1970s however, a remarkable revival of wood as energy source has taken place. Until 1997 its contribution rose to 11.7% of national primary energy use. Together with the use of hydropower Austria is able to derive a quarter of its energy demand from renewable resources.

Several factors have contributed to this development: higher oil prices, decreasing wood costs due to productivity gains in forestry and increased use of wood wastes for process heat in the wood working industry and in the pulp and paper industry.

In 1995 almost 20% of residences were heated with wood, in addition to those that were supplied with heat from biomassfuelled district heating plants. The market share of wood is thus considerable, with small scale biomass plants (using pellets, woodchips or logwood) with a capacity of up to 100 kw playing a key part as about 60% of the biomass utilised in Austria is used in this type of installation (Source: EVA).

The revival of biomass use was actively supported by R&D efforts to improve wood combustion technologies. The result of these efforts was a remarkable development which provided the basis for the growth of the market for wood boilers for domestic heating, industrial process heat applications and district heating. Growth has also been stimulated by various other support activities and subsidies. Along with the use of forestry products for bioenergy, agricultural biomass production has also received significant attention. Short rotation forestry has been tested since 1980 and several other crops were investigated.

Due to low prices for fossil energy carriers, fuel wood lost significant market shares to oil and gas in the 90s. In an attempt to counteract this tendency, a new, improved range of services was developed, including new boiler technologies (fully automatic installations), new fuel types (pellets) and new supply strategies (e.g. contracting projects for micro networks and heat supply schemes for individual buildings on the basis of woodchips from forestry).

[ Technology Profile ] => [ next chapter 2 ]