After much discussion the UK forest industries sector has come up with a formula to develop market opportunities for wood based renewable energy in a way that it believes will strengthen forest industry across the board
The Forest Industries Development Council (FIDC) has looked at the potential supply and availability of round wood – including poor quality large dimension material, harvesting residues, sawmill co-products and recycled timber and agreed that there is significant scope for developing additional wood-based renewable energy capacity in the UK.
A position statement, ratified by the FIDC board on October 22, said
the importance of maintaining the viability of existing processing businesses whilst maximising the long-term benefits for the sector as a whole has been recognised.
The FIDC said this can be done through using raw material in long-term markets that maximise its added-value potential and encouraging the development of raw material streams that are currently under utilised.
It has also identified significant regional variations in the supply and demand situation for raw material and said that maximum benefit will only be achieved if raw material for energy generation is drawn from areas with both short and likely long-term raw material surpluses.
It concluded that, as long as secure long term markets are developed, there is significant scope for the development of new supply chains to exploit raw material such as harvesting residues which are currently largely under utilised.
