RES Scenario in the European Union - The Sustainability of Renewable Energy in Europe - page 51

been, 2010, the year in which it has begun to bear fruit the choice of EU countries
to exploit more decisively the potential of biomass. In fact, the increase in 2009 was
4 % compared to 2008, almost half that recorded in step 2009-2010. This figure
shows that also the economic crisis, which started apparent already at that time, has
not undermined the efforts made by EU member states to make structural exploita-
tion for energy purposes of biomass. Indeed, the industry has shown a consider-
able ability to respond to significant increases of the energy demand for heating
and for the production of electrical energy, also in a context characterized by great
economic difficulty. By looking at the statistics of the past 20 years, this decline in
energy production from solid biomass is particularly unusual given that in the EU it
has grown steadily since 1990, except for a slight decline in 1999. It is in fact that,
in the period 1990-2010, it is more than doubled (39.5 Mtoe produced in 1990).
A stop of the increasing trend in energy production from biomass has been in
2011: primary energy production from solid biomass (wood, wood waste, other bio-
mass plants or animals) in the EU has declined by 2.4 Mtoe reaching 78.8 Mtoe. The
gross consumption of primary energy from solid biomass, which includes imports
and exports, amounted to 80.8 Mtoe in 2011, a decrease of 3.9 % with respect to the
previous year. The main reason for this difference is the increase in imports such
as wood pellets from Canada and the USA. Final consumption of energy, which is
much of the heat 5 consumption (in the residential and industrial sectors), amounted
to 58 Mtoe, showing a decrease of 3.1 % compared to 2010. The total consumption
of heat has been 64.9 Mtoe in 2011, a decrease of 2.4 Mtoe compared to 2010.
It is also interesting the ranking of countries for energy production with primary
solid biomass: Germany stands out, followed closely by France, Sweden, and Fin-
land (Table 2.9 ). Then by looking in more detail the composition of the data, it turns
out that when it comes to the use of biomass for the production of heat, the ranking
changes, and Sweden, Finland, and Denmark spring at the top.
Eurostat provides biofuels that is any fuel derived from biomass.
Finland, in particular, it is noted that the European country that makes more
use of wood for energy purposes has increased the exploitation in a single year
(2009-2010) by as much as 18.6 %. This pulse is due to the impetus given to the
construction of many new cogeneration plants, in line with what happened in the
past decades in Finland, period in which there were constructed 50 biomass cogen-
eration plants and 300 plants for district heating powered mainly by coal and peat.
The shift from coal to biomass is also a consequence of a policy of taxation on CO 2
emissions introduced in Finland since 1997. This route is similar to what is mak-
ing Sweden, where the CO 2 emission has been almost steadily decreasing since, in
1990, it was introduced this kind of taxation.
The Swedish case is particularly significant because despite the carbon tax
was in 2011, the highest in the EU (up to touch 115 €/ton CO 2 ), its effect on the
economy was not depressing, but rather gave new impetus to the installation of
biomass plants.
5 Heat production generally comes from cogeneration plants (plants that produce both heat and
electricity).