Biomass Availability

The use of biomass is one of the key ways of ensuring the development of sustainable energy in Europe. The EU policies for biomass have achieved the increase of the energy that produced from renewable sources in 2010. The annual primary energy production from solid biomass amounted to 79.3 Mtoe in 2010, 8% more than in 2009. The amount of biomass that produced every year worldwide is about 172 billion tonnes and its energy value is 10 times bigger than the energy that consumed every year worldwide. According to recent researches only the 1/7 of the overall energy that consumed comes from biomass.

Biomass availability in Greece

In Greece there are available agricultural and forestry residues that are equivalent with 3-4 million tones of petrol. This amount is equivalent with the 30-40% of the overall quantity of petrol that consumed every year in our country. Also it has to be mentioned that 1 tone of biomass is equivalent with about 0,4 tones of petrol. However this period in Greece only the 3% of the annual energy needs are covered with the use of biomass. According recent researches, in Greece there are available about 7.500.000 tones of agricultural residues and about 2.700.000 tones of forestry residues.

Biomass feedstock in Greece

• Agricultural residues

Olive kernel

Bark cotton

Straw

Rice husk

Corn

• Forestry residues

Wood chips

Wooden residues

• Energy crops

• Municipal solid waste

Energy crops in Greece

• In the next decade 100-150 million acres can be used for energy crops.

• 10 million acres of energy crops in Greece is equivalent with about 50-60% of the annual consumption of petrol.