From September 2009, Eesti Energia will use chipped wood for electricity production in a move to reinvigorate Estonia’s entire forestry sector and to increase the share of renewable energy. The State Forest Management Centre, an agency of the Ministry of the Environment, is one of the major suppliers of chipped wood to Eesti Energia, but the company also intends to involve private enterprises in its supply chain.
“The fact that Eesti Energia will use chipped wood for electricity production will have a reinvigorating effect on the entire forestry sector in Estonia,” said Jaanus Tamkivi, the Minister of the Environment. “It will provide work for lumbermen, preserve the existing jobs and certainly also generate new jobs. In other words, the decline of Estonia’s forestry sector will be halted.”
According to the Estonian Forestry Development Plan, the optimal annual volume of cutting should be 12.3 m3 but only half of that volume is currently harvested. As a result, the percentage of mature and overmature hardwood stands in the forests has significantly increased. Alder and willow thickets have grown on fallow fields, causing congestion of drains in several places. Using such wood as a fuel would enable to utilise more native renewable resources for energy production.
Chipped wood will be used in unit 11 of the Balti Power Plant and unit 8 of the Eesti Power Plant. Together, these two units will produce, on average, between 260 and 280 GWh of renewable energy per year. This is equivalent to the annual consumption of nearly 100,000 Estonian families.
“Hundreds of thousands tons of oil shale will remain unburned thanks to the production of electricity from chipped wood,” said Tamkivi. “It is a major step in the development of renewable energy and reduces the greenhouse gases emissions from electricity production.”
More information: (31/08/2009) |
