challenge: how can we help people to save on heating costs and to use clean energy?
solution: cost-efficient and carbon neutral pellets.
The member states in the European Union have set themselves ambitious policy objectives of increasing the share of renewable energy sources in electricity and heat production, with a target of 21% of electricity and 20% of heat from renewables in the total energy mix by 2020.
This is one of the driving forces for the pellet market, which is expected to grow from the current eight million tonnes (2008) to 130–170 million tonnes by 2020.
“Oil and electricity still dominate in the market, but both the consumer trends and price concerns are on our side. European consumers like pellets because they are natural and safe. Today, price-competitiveness is also turning communities and other large customers from oil and coal into using pellets,” says Tomas Isaksson, Director, Pellet Operations.
Stora Enso has currently the largest pellet operations in Sweden, where Kopparfors Sawmill started with pellet production in mid-November 2009. The targeted annual output of 200 000 tonnes is a major breakthrough for Stora Enso Wood Products in Sweden. This is by far the largest facility in the company. Wood Products has already pellet production units at Gruvön Sawmill in Sweden, and Impilahti and Nebolchi in Russia. Altogether, the four production units have a pellet production of 350 000 tonnes per year.
The European pellet market has attracted a lot of new competitors to the market, and the industry as such is fragmented. Tomas assumes that only players integrated in the wood industry will succeed in the long run.
“We have a clear advantage in that we can install pellet presses to our existing sawmills. This enables direct access to the raw material, cost-efficient logistics and premium quality production – all in one spot. If any of these elements should be missing, it would be difficult to run the business long-term,” Tomas states.
Wood pellets are a clean, CO2-neutral and convenient fuel, produced mostly of sawdust and wood shavings and compressed under high pressure without any use of glue or other additives.
