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Bioenergy no 5 September 2015

Bioenergy International No 81, 5-2015 5 INTERNATI NAL BIOENERGY in ternation al Holländargatan 17 SE-111 60 Stockholm, Sweden Tel: +46 8 441 70 80 E-mail: info@bioenergyinternational.com Twitter:BioenergyIntl www.bioenergyinternational.com PUBLISHER Kjell Andersson kjell.andersson@svebio.se EDITOR IN CHIEF Alan Sherrard alan.sherrard@bionergyinternational.com SALES, MARKETING & CO-EDITORS Dorota Natucka dorota.natucka@bioenergyinternational.com Jeanette Fogelmark jeanette.fogelmark@bioenergyinternational.com Xinyi Shen xinyi.shen@bioenergyinternational.com SUBSCRIPTION 7 issues 125 EUR. Order: info@bioenergyinternational.com PRINTING Exaktaprinting, Malmö, Sweden OWNER SBSAB/Svebio Holländargatan 17 SE-111 60 Stockholm, Sweden ABOUT BIOENERGY INTERNAT IONAL Bioenergy International is produced in cooperation with the European Biomass Association, AEBIOM and published 7 times a year. COVER PHOTO Putting it all together, another biomass boiler begins to take shape in Kaunas inside the workshop of Lithuanian biomass boiler developer and manufacturer Enerstena. According to a recent TMR report, the global biomass boiler market is estimated to grow almost 20% to 2022 (photo Alan Sherrard). No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in any form without the prior written consent of the publisher. Whilst every reasonable effort is made to check accuracy, all articles and information are published in good faith. Readers are advised to verify statements and facts direct with official sources before acting on them as the publisher cannot, under any circumstances, accept any responsibility. Opinions expressed should not be construed as being those of the publisher. SI units and ISO 4217 currency codes are used as a matter of preference. Negawatts, trees and heat competition A ”negawatt” is a term sometimes used to describe energy efficiency and conservation. Originally coined by Amory B. Lovins, a physicist and research director at Rocky Mountain Institute, Colorado, US who advocated behavioural change in power consumption rather than adding new capacity, and the formation of ”negawatt markets” whereby saved electricity is treated as a commodity. In 1990 he published ”The Negawatt Revolution” in which he argued that up to 75 percent of US electricity consumption could be saved using existing energy saving technologies while providing unchanged or improved services. According to Lovins, energy efficiency and negawatt markets are a win-win solution to many environmental problems. Even in the US in 1990 it was generally cheaper to save (fossil) fuel than to burn it and so ”global warming, acid rain, and urban smog could be reduced not at a cost but at a profit”. Furthermore, it ultimately represented a US$ trillion-a-year global market. Lovins also referenced a Swedish 1989 study, which suggested that by using electricity twice as efficiently Sweden could fulfil the electorate’s mandate to phase out the nuclear half of the nation’s power supply while simultaneously supporting 54 percent growth in real gross national product (GNP), reducing the utilities’ carbon dioxide output by a third, and cutting the total cost of electrical services by nearly US$1 billion per year. ”All the more encouraging because Sweden has a severe climate, a heavily industrialised economy, and perhaps the world’s highest aggregate energy efficiency to start with”, Lovins remarked in his paper. With the benefit of hindsight, figures from the Swedish Bioenergy Association (Svebio) show that during the 1990–2012 period Sweden’s GNP grew by 57 percent and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions decreased 20 percent. Bioenergy had the largest share of final domestic energy use in 2013, at 33.6 percent or 130.2 TWh, almost exactly the same as fossil oil, coal and gas combined. A major factor in this decoupling of economic growth and emissions is the year-on-year growth of bioenergy that increased 106 percent during the same period. Within the Swedish heating sector and industry, bioenergy is the main energy source and it is growing in use for electricity and transportation fuels. With the largest forest estate in the EU, a competitive forest industry, and engaged forest owners as this year’s edition of SkogsElmia showed, it is not surprising woody biomass is a big source. That doesn’t mean Swedish forests are grown just for fuel nor are they ”fake”: 2013 Eurostat figures indicate that over 90 percent of the nation’s 70.4 million m³ harvest, the largest in the EU, was industrial roundwood for sawnwood, veneers, pulp and paper. Bioenergy and biomass fuels are by-products of these forest-based industries. The EU accounts for approximately 5 percent of the world’s forests and contrary to widespread belief, its forested area is increasing. Indeed Planet Earth has about 3.04 trillion trees, an order of magnitude higher than previously thought but half the historic high according to a paper “Mapping tree density at a global scale” published in Nature. The EU “Renewable energy progress report” (COM 2013) concludes that wood and wood waste provided the lion’s share of almost half or 47 percent of the gross inland energy consumption of renewables within the EU-28 in 2012. Counting the other biomass sources including municipal waste adds another 20 percent. Slightly more than one fifth of the EU-28’s 2013 roundwood production was used as fuel. Globally, wood accounts for 6 percent of the total primary energy supply according FAO’s “The State of the World’s Forests 2014”. What then is the most cost efficient solution for reducing both GHG emissions and primary energy demand in an increasingly urbanised and industrialised world? Modern district energy (DE) systems, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report “District energy in cities – unlocking the potential of energy efficiency and renewable energy”, released in February this year. Examples of DE are often featured in this publication as, like electricity, district energy is not an energy source but an energy carrier. The UNEP report surveyed low-carbon cities worldwide to identify the key factors underlying their success in scaling up energy efficiency and renewable energy, as well as in attaining targets for zero or low GHG emissions. One finding is that as managers of energy infrastructure and services, local governments are uniquely positioned to accelerate the transition to renewable and sustainable energy but they need to apply “systems thinking” when addressing challenges in the energy, transport, buildings and industry sectors. Our feature story about Kauno Energija in Lithuania exemplifies this application of systems thinking, in which negawatts, trees and heat competition have resulted in lower consumer prices, less GHG emissions and better profitability. Winners all round. Alan Sherrard


Bioenergy no 5 September 2015
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