Finnish Wood Pellet Market
To mitigate climate change and reduce CO2 emissions now is an emergent task for all of the world, which drives the utilization of renewable energy. Renewable energy is energy that comes from resources which are continually replenished such as sunlight, wind, rain, tide, waves and geothermal heat including solar energy, wind energy, hydraulic energy and ocean energy and geothermal energy and biomass energy. Among these renewable energy, biomass, which can get from plants and animal wastes are most welcomed. As one typical kind of biomass energy, wood pellets which can be made from forestry residues, wood waste and agriculture residues are developing quickly in Finland.
The History of Wood Pellet Market in Finland
Since 90% of the land of Finland is covered by forests, Finland has a long history of using wood fuel and bio-energy. Wood pellet production was born in Finland in 1998 oriented to export to Sweden. Pellet market has been long time export oriented since the domestic consumption is really in a small portion. In 2001, the annual pellet production was about 90,000 tons of which 80% was exported to countries like Sweden, Denmark, UK and Belgium. And the total pellet production was about 200,000 tons in 2005, and the domestic consumption in Finland was only about 50,000 tons, about 25% of the total production. In the following years, the export and domestic wood pellet production was still increasing while the domestic still occupied only small proportion of the total pellet production. This situation kept until the year 2008, the domestic consumption amounted to about 45% of the total pellet production and Finland imported wood pellets from the first time. And since then importation of wood pellets began in Finland. Today, due to the increased increasing of domestic consumption of wood pellet and lacking of raw materials of wood pellets, Finland has become both wood pellet export and import countries.
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Obstacles of the Development of Wood Pellet Market
With the development of wood pellet in Finland, problems appears in Finland wood pellet market in the following aspects:
1. Lacking of raw materials. Through 90% of Finland is covered by forests, Finland has long traditions in the import of raw materials. The wood pellet production has been limited by lacking of raw materials in Finland. Now Finland is exported raw materials from Russia and since the pellets price is cheaper than Finland.
2. Technical problems. Since Finland wood pellets are exported to countries which requires of high quality, the technical problems of wood pellet pelletizing, distribution, storage are needed to be solved. Long distance transportation will easily cause strong wear of pellets and the unproper storage also cause problems in the development of wood pellets. But the most critical thing is that the pellet combustion equipments. Since lacking of standard making for combustion equipments, the pellet combustion equipments may cause insufficient combustion of wood pellets and other problems which will make the customers lose their confidence in using pellet.
3. Lacking of standard. Though in 2002, a public instruction for pellets quality was developed by the Bioenergy Association of Finland, there are no strict standard of wood pellets quality, so the quality are mixed in Finland wood pellet market.
Projections of wood pellet market in Finland
Though there are still some problems obstacle the development of Finland wood pellets market, the wood pellets industry still has a big potential. Finland government has implemented some measures to support the development of wood pellet and the numbers of using wood pellet for households heating is increasing year by year and wood pellet making equipments are been improved by manufactures to making high quality wood pellets. For example, wood pellet mills especially the MZLH series wood pellet mills in our company are particularly designed for products which are difficult to be pelletized, such as wood waste and straws. In a world, the wood pellet market in Finland still has big developing potential.
