CALU Press Release – 12/2006

"BIOMASS ENERGY: - INFORMATION AT YOUR FINGERTIPS".

Written by Catherine Heywood, renewable energy consultant for CALU and ADAS, and Ian Tubby, Co-director of the Biomass Energy Centre

The biomass energy sector has experienced considerable growth over the last few years, reflecting increasing fossil fuel prices and growing concerns over carbon emissions and climate change. Biomass fuels can be derived from many different sources including:

· agricultural wastes or residues, like slurry or straw,

· purpose grown energy crops, like Miscanthus (elephant grass) and willow short rotation coppice;

· existing forests and woodlands

· and agricultural crops like oil seed rape, sugar beet and wheat

With the growing number of biomass projects, policies and initiatives established across the UK, it is often hard for potential biomass users or suppliers to find the information they need.

Two new key websites have been developed with the aim of simplifying things, providing points of access to the wealth of information that is available. Specific to Wales is CALU’s Wales Energy Crops website, whilst the Biomass Energy Centre website is UK wide. Both sites are aimed at providing unbiased, generic or basic information on biomass fuels and technologies.

Wales Energy Crops website (www.energycropswales.co.uk)

The Wales Energy Crops website strives to be a central hub for information on crops grown specifically for heat and power generation. As well as being a valuable website in its own right it links into, and acknowledges other key websites within Wales and the UK. In this way it aims to help stimulate and support the market as a whole. Pages within the site cover topics as diverse as economics, alternative uses, opening markets, logistics, biomass technologies, trials and research as well as news and events. The Welsh Assembly funded site was developed by ADAS Wales and is maintained by CALU (Centre for Alternative Land Use) and will be live from December 2006.

The site incorporates some useful interactive calculators that help calculate the costs of production for Miscanthus and Short Rotation Willow Coppice crops. “The economics of production always cause some level of debate. The fact that the costs can vary wildly depending on site, current prices etc, can make the production of standard sheets on economics difficult. Having calculators on the site with changeable default values enables people to tailor production costs to their own situation and current market conditions” says Catherine Heywood CALU’s biomass energy expert. In addition to the production calculators, the site also boasts an energy calculator, displaying how much energy is produced from a given area of Miscanthus, along with comparisons to oil and gas.

The site links to the main CALU website where technical leaflets on a range of energy crops, along with leaflets on anaerobic digestion and liquid biofuels can be found. A new addition to the CALU website is the Welsh Assembly funded booklet “Energy generation and energy efficiency on farm – a guide” which provides a point of access to other technologies such as ground source heat pumps, wind, solar and hydroelectric power. For more details see www.energycropswales.co.uk or contact CALU on 01248 680450.

Biomass Energy Centre (BEC) website (www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk)

The Biomass Energy Centre (BEC) has created a website and an enquiries answering service aimed at providing unbiased, generic or basic information on biomass fuels and technologies.

The processes that turn biomass into useable fuels and the technologies that are used to convert these fuels into useful heat and or power are very diverse. For example the term ‘wood fuel’ refers not just to logs but also to saw dust, wood pellets, briquettes, wood chips, saw mill off cuts and wood reclaimed from the waste management industry. These fuels could be used in anything from a small stove or space heater in a domestic setting through to industrial scale power stations capable of supplying electricity to thousands of homes. The website provides information on the full range of possibilities within the biomass fuel sector.

The BEC site aims to draw together existing sources of information available in each of the devolved countries. This enables the centre to provide customers with basic information before directing them to the most appropriate technical or detailed advice. In Wales the BEC has links with the Centre for Alternative Land Use (CALU), Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER), Forestry Commission Wales, ADAS and other organisations providing the most up-to-date and relevant information on all manner of biomass fuels and uses.

The BEC was launched in late April 2006, in response to recommendations made by the Biomass Task Force which reported to Government in October 2005. The BEC website has been live since early September and BEC staff have already answered close to 500 enquires received via telephone or email or whilst exhibiting at events such as the Royal Welsh Show. A wide range of users from the agricultural, industrial, forestry, public and educational sectors have contacted the BEC seeking more information on biomass systems In the coming months the BEC will continue to develop and build on its capacity to handle increased volumes of enquiries in future and improve its technical knowledge and links to other organisations. For more details see www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk or phone 01420 526197.