Global Woody Biomass Trade for Energy

Challenges and Opportunities for International Trade in Forest Biomass

“…8.3 shows two estimates: one for 100% (MAX) and one for 50% (MIN) import dependency. The second estimate is in line with trade projections by Lamers et al (2014a).…”

“…Although the majority of the trade in roundwood is not connected to bioenergy, there is a large amount of indirect trade, in the form of wood processing residues (Heinimö, 2008;Heinimö et al, 2013). The direct trade in raw forest material for bioenergy (ie excluding waste wood) has been small, compared to the trade in wood pellets, because high quality raw wood chips and roundwood can achieve higher prices in the pulp and paper and timber markets (Lamers et al, 2014a). Both wood chips and roundwood are also less suitable for international trade than wood pellets because of their relatively high moisture content and low bulk density, which renders them more expensive to transport over long distances.…”

“…Over the past several years, most of the globally traded solid biomass has been used for energy production in the EU Lamers et al, 2014aLamers et al, , 2014b. Other key importing regions for internationally traded forest biomass include South Korea and Japan.…”

The wood pellet business in Russia with the role of North-West Russian regions: Present trends and future challenges

“…Due to past and expected future EU demand and industrial developments in the sector, such as large-scale use of wood pellets in co-and mono-firing installations, wood pellets have become the largest single commodity stream in the wood manufacturing industry and an important item in international trade. In addition, wood pellets are a key diversification strategy of many forestry companies and other traditional forest sector players, such as mechanical wood product companies [12][13][14][15]. In EU-27, wood pellet consumption was 9 million tons in 2009.…”

“…Depending on the source, market growth for wood pellets is projected to grow by 200%-300% from 2012 to 2020, rising from 16 million to 40-50 million tons [17][18][19]. Lamers et al [12] report a projected increase in wood pellet imports in EU-27 by 2020 with expected volume in the range of 15-20 million tons. Russian pellets have an important share of global markets.…”