Wood fuel in heat and power supply of Russia – realities and opportunities

Kirill Degtyarev, Research Laboratory for Renewable Energy Sources of the Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov

kir1111@rambler.ru, ph.: 8(985)774-97-82

Abstract

For the 70%-80% of the territory of Russia, including the centre and north of European part of the country and inner parts of Siberia, the use of solar, wind, and geothermal energy is not efficient because of natural conditions. So, the question is which types of renewable energy sources in these regions could be involved in heat and power production. The answer is bioenergy, of wood fuel due to rich forest resources of these territories. Its share in the total heat and power supply can be increased by 2-3 times from the present levels up to 20%-30%. It is analyzed through the case of Karelia — a forested northwestern Russian region.

Key words:

Russia, Karelia, renewable energy, energy sources, forest, wood fuel, heat, timber harvesting, wastewood, wood pellets, chipped wood, split wood.

Renewable energy usually is perceived as a trine of solar, wind, and geothermal constituents.

A problem of Russia is that opportunities of these sources on the most of its territory are questionable because of natural environment particularities.

Favorable conditions for solar energy are in the south of Russia, for wind energy are in the south too and, beside that, in steppe, coastal, mountainous regions, for geothermal energy — in the geologically distinctive zones such as Kamchatka, Kuril Islands, and Caucasus. These territories total some 20%-30% of all Russian area.

Major wind power stations are planned to be created in Murmansk, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad regions, Kalmykia, south of Western Siberia, and Far East.

There is also the project of a wind park in Ulyanovsk region (Middle Volga) but it is an exception from the general rule. These plans cover mainly neither Middle European Russia nor inner parts of the North and Siberia.

Solar energy projects are connected only with the south of Russia such as Stavropol region and Tyva.

Geothermal energy projects cover Kamchatka, Kurils, and Caucasus.

So there is a question about any opportunities of renewable energy on 70%-80% of Russian territory.

This question has the positive answer, connected, above all, with bioenergy due to rich forest resources of these territories.

But the following question is about the share wood fuel can contribute to the matrix of energy supply. Here we try to answer it based on the data on Karelia — a forested region in the northwest of European Russia neighboring to Finland.

Traditionally wood fuel is widely used in Karelia; first of all it is split wood for heating residences. There are more than 300 thousand wood stoves (per 900 thousand inhabitants) that heat some 20% of the housing areas in towns and more than 77% in villages, and the total area of the residences heated through wood stoves is some 7 million square meters.

Total housing area in Karelia is 23 million square meters. So, split wood heat more than 30% of the area.

According to the Russian National bioenergy union, wood fuel produces 11% of the total heat in Karelia.

These data can be compared with the other for additional testing.

An average consumption of split wood in these climate conditions is some 0.2 cubic meters per 1 square meters of a house per year. So, the total consumption for heating 7 million square meters is 1.4 million cubic meters annually.

Average calorific capacity of 1 cubic meter of split wood is some 1.3 Mwh. So, total energy production with input-output ratio 40% is 1.4x1.3x40% = 0.7 Twh.

According to Rosstat (Russian statistical survey), total heat production in Karelia is 9.3 Twh per year. In this case split wood covers 0.7/9.3 = 7.5%. It is significantly lower than 11% but this difference is acceptable under the given level of preciseness.

The following question is pressure on the forest resources.

Annual timber harvesting in Karelia is 5-6 million cubic meters (some 3% of total Russian volume). So, the share of split wood for heating (1.4 million cubic meters) is 25%.

Forested area in Karelia is some 9 million ha, or 55% of the territory and the total reserves of timber are 800-900 million cubic meters.

So, annual timber harvesting is 0.8% of the total resources or more than 2 times less than the forest reproduction (average annual reproduction of timber in Karelia is 1.5 cubic meters per 1 ha or 13 million cubic meters in Karelia totally).

These calculations can make an impression that source for increase of the wood fuel share is additional forest harvesting. It means several million cubic meters more and, therefore, growth of the timber share in energy supply from the present 7%-11% up to 30%-40%.

Nevertheless these data are not sufficient to make this conclusion.

First, real deforestation in Karelia is probably higher, particularly, because of wide illegal timber harvesting and exports. Its volumes, according to expert evaluations are 10%-15% of the official figures, and can be even significantly more in the border areas.

Second, it is not sufficient to use the data for Karelia in general. The volume of the forest resources, their reproduction and accessibility — all this makes economic practicality of timber harvesting not equal in the different parts of Karelia.

The representatives of Russian timber and bioenergy industries recognize waste wood as the principal resource. According to their evaluations, they total up to 50% of the timber harvesting volume.

So, in the Karelian case it means the volumes up to 2-3 million cubic meters and, consequently, an opportunity to increase the share of wood fuel in heat and power supply by 3 times up to 30% or even more.

It is also possible to use forest sanitation as an additional source of energy.

Nevertheless it is more theoretical than real economic opportunity because of the number of factors:

1. Both economic and ecologic impossibility to use all 100% of waste wood;

2. Low incomes and effective demand of households and businesses;

3. Need to grow energy supply in Russia cardinally that often is not considered.

Ecologic side of waste wood use is that taking out stubs, roots, cortex, and chip must not be complete, and certain quantities (according to Finnish and Swedish experts up to 30% and more in some cases) of waste wood must be remained in the forest to save soil fertility.

Economic point of view is that gathering and processing waste wood after principal forest harvesting often is unprofitable and requires governmental support. It’s also seen through both Scandinavian (where governmental support exists) and Russian (where it’s essentially absent) experience.

A lot depends on logistics and environment: distances, volumes, properties of ground and, consequently, timber truck roads.

Lower economic efficiency of timber harvesting in Russia than in Scandinavian countries and Canada is caused also by a number of natural and logistic factors: lower productivity of biomass, longer distances, and softer ground, that reduces the timber harvesting season.

It is also important to consider the structure of wood fuel consumption. The principal type of wood fuel in Russia so far is conventional split wood.

National Bioenergy Union represents the data on Russia in general according to that split wood covers 5% of the total heat supply in the country. Five million Russian households (or 10%-15% of the total population) use it as a fuel consuming some 50 million cubic meters annually.

Finland and Sweden, vise-versa, use mainly wood chip and pellets.

The reason is that wood split harvesting and use is labor intensive and hardly submitted to automation. Wood split in Russia dominate because of relatively low labor costs and effective demand.

A typical 2-floored house of 120 square meters in the north of Sweden requires 7 tons of pellets annually. The consumer price for 1 ton of pellets is 100-150 euro per 1 ton. Therefore, heating costs amount 1000 euro annually that would be too expensive for the most of Russian country households.

From the other side hypothetical increase of wood split production would practically be limited with deficit of workforce and rise of labor costs.

So a way except development of higher-tech wood fuel production is scarcely possible.

Production of wood pellet in Russia has been growing rapidly in the recent years. Now the total capacity of Russian biofuel plants using wood and agricultural waste is some 3 million tons per year, but it works mainly for exports, and domestic consumption is 20% only.

Development of the industry is restrained by low domestic effective demand together with volatility of the export markets because of the economic crisis in Europe.

To evaluate the possible share of the wood fuel in heat and power supply of Russia it’s also necessary to consider real energy needs for Russia’s economic development that are two times higher the present energy production.

In this case growth of the wood fuel share up to 20%-30% can appear to be a not easily soluble task even for Russian northern and northwestern regions.

To evaluate opportunities of wood fuel use it’s also possible to refer to neighboring countries. In Finland, according to METLA research institute, wood fuel covers 21% of Finnish heat and power production. The plans for 2025-30 are to increase it up to 38%.

The total energy consumption of chipped wood in Finland in 2010 amounts 7 million cubic meters vs. only 1 million in 1011. Almost 90%, or 6 million cubic meters, power stations use and households use the rest.

For the same period annual wood pellet production grew from 80-100 thousand to 300-350 thousand tons. Besides that, 5-10 years ago pellet production worked mainly for exports (like in Russia now) but at present domestic consumption covers 50%.

It’s also interesting that a significant part of both chips and pellets in Finland is produced on timber imported from Russia.

So, growth of the wood fuel share in energy supply matrix of Russian Northwest (region with the richest forest resources) from 10% to 20%-30% can be recognize as a principally soluble, although not easy task.

Background for this should be stimulation of domestic demand and restructuring of wood fuel production and consumption. In its turn it requires growth of household and business incomes.