More and more homes, businesses and organisations are using wood
fuel boilers, creating a growing demand for wood in the form of
logs, pellets and chips.
Continued growth
Forestry Commission Scotland's (FCS) Woodfuel Demand and Usage
in Scotland Report 2015 identified 1,248k oven dry tonnes
(odt) of woodfuel used in Scotland in 2015. This is an increase of
14% over what was used in 2014 and 38% increase of what was used in
2013.
The 2015 report can be accessed here and the combined 2013 and
2014 report here.
Other headline facts from the 2015 report are as follows:
- At the end of 2015 there were an estimated 5,985 boilers using
woodfuel in Scotland, of these 99.5% of the installations are heat
only with a thermal capacity of less than 1,000 kilowatts
(kW).
- Total woodfuel used in Scotland in 2015 was 1,248k oven dry
tonnes (odt), a 150k odt increase in the amount used over the 2014
reported figure of 1,098k - a 13.7% increase. This is in contrast
to the 2013-14 increase of 41.3%.
- In 2015, the number of large boilers with a capacity of 1,000
kilowatt thermal (kWth) and above represented 0.45% of all boilers
using woodfuel in Scotland. The amount of woodfuel used by the
boilers in this category dropped as percentage of total woodfuel
use from 84% in 2014 to 81.2% in 2015.
- The highest number of woodfuel boiler installations are found
in rural Local Authority areas with Aberdeenshire, Borders,
Dumfries and Galloway and Highland accounting for almost 50% of all
installations.
- The majority of woodfuel used in Scotland continues to be
virgin fibre, sawmill co-products and process residues, but amounts
decreased as a percentage of overall woodfuel used to 52.3% in
2015, a decrease of 1% compared to 2014. Recycled wood use
decreased to 39% compared to 42% in 2014 but still remains an
important source for very large boilers. Pellet increased slightly
to 5% in 2015 up from 4% in 2014.
- There will be at least two large new woodfuel boilers
commissioned in 2016 with a further 3 large boilers in the process
of design, planning or development. The predicted increase in
demand for 2016 may only be as high as 72.5k odt and for 2017 a
further 12k odt. As reported in the 2014 report, continued
'degression' of tariff rates offered by the Department of Business
Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) as a result of a high uptake
of RHI schemes and the reduction in the price of oil, has slowed
the rate of installations in the heat category of less than 200
kWth, which has seen the highest increase in the number of boilers
in the last two years.
- No new wood pellet plants have been opened since 2012 so the
total in Scotland remains at 5. The quantity of wood used for the
manufacture of pellets in 2015 was approximately 296k odt compared
to 304k in 2014.
- Woodfuel boilers in Scotland contributed 3,276k megawatt hours
(MWh) in 2015 to the Scottish Government's renewable heat
targets.
- Wood-fuelled boilers in Scotland are estimated to have saved
1,467k tonnes of CO2e in 2015, which is slightly more
than in 2014 (1,309k tonnes), mainly due to an increase in woodfuel
use but also due to changes in the methodology used.
The chart below shows woodfuel useage in Scotland since
2004/05.
Available raw material
The estimated volume of raw material in Scotland was estimated
by the
Woodfuel Task Force in 2011.