Browsing by Subject "woodbased fuels"

Political incentives often have a central role in bioenergy production. Influence of these incentives is expected to increase, because conventional fossil fuels are draining and the climate change forces policy makers to react. Hence, the demand for biofuels is also expected to grow. Woodbased fuels are the most important biofuel and renewable energy source in Finland. Woodbased fuels are almost equally divided into liquid byproducts of the pulp industry and solid woodbased fuels. This study focuses on solid woodbased fuels, because these solid fuels have markets unlike e.g. black liquor and because these shares increase. In this study, the solid woodbased fuels include forest chips, bark, sawdust, industrial chips, recycled wood and pellets. One aim of the study is to formulate a general view of the Finnish woodbased fuel markets. The demand is analysed by using the statistics of The Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) and the supply by using existing literature. Metla compiles statistics about the utilization of woodbased fuels from over 700 energy facilities, comparing several categories of woodbased fuels. This study overwiews the period from 2003 to 2007. Energy facilities are divided into four different so that the specifics of the demand can be identified. Another aim of the thesis is to study the impact of emissions trading on woodbased fuel utilization. Emissions trading is the most important instrument for improving the competitive advantage of renewable energy production for energy facilities that belong to the scheme, producing heat or electricity with over 20 MW nominal effect. The growth in the credit price of 2 co emissions increases the demand for biofuels and reduces the demand for fossil fuel in energy facilities of over 20 MW. Empirical analysis are carried out for different energy facility categories. Large community facilities are more sensitive to the changes of credit price than the forest industry`s plants. Energy facilities with 520 MW nominal capacities reduce the woodbased fuel utilization, when the credit price rises. This flux diminishes the effect of the emissions trading. On the other hand, it seems that changes in credit price do not affect the woodbased fuel consumption in energy facilities of less than 5 MW. The utilization of woodbased fuels will change due to the stuctural changes in the forest industry. The production of byproducts, such as bark, decreases with diminishing quantaties of traditional forest industry products. If the increasing demand was met, forest chip utilization should be added. However, especially the restriction of production in the sawmill industry decreases the supply of harvesting residues chip and forest chip production shifts more towards energy wood thinning. Also, the use of woodbased fuels among different energy facilities is changing. The utilization of woodbased fuels has traditionally been centralized in the forest industry units using industrial byproducts. Nowadays, it is also an important energy source for the energy production facilities of the communities due to different policy instruments. This has affected that the trade of woodbased fuels has increased.