Local Biomass. Local Biomass, what is it? Technical aspects. Network Communities of a sustainable Europe (CoSE)

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1 Local Biomass Network Communities of a sustainable Europe (CoSE) International network of RURAL villages and URBAN neighborhoods for bottom-up approach For more information, see: Local Biomass Widely available in rural areas By means of incineration or digestion For both heating and electricity generation From household application to community-covering scale Carbon neutral Easy to contribute Local Biomass, what is it? Local biomass can be divided in two main categories: organic waste and purposefully harvested biomass. Organic waste composes of residues of cooking - like left-overs, cutting scrapes or oils and fats - but also mowed grasses or prunings from the garden and manure from (hobby) farming. Everything that you would normally dispose of in an organic waste bin or container is suitable as input for biomass-based energy production. Purposefully harvested biomass includes timber from local forests and energy crops like maize or rapeseed. Technical aspects Energy generation from biomass can be based on several techniques. For local application on a community scale, incineration and digestion are most suitable. Incineration is the more obvious and well-known variant. Humans have burned biomass for energy production, mostly for heating and cooking, for centuries. But techniques have improved significantly in recent years and now high efficiency rates can be achieved. Digestion is a biological process based on bacteria that eat organic material and produce carbonic gasses as a waste product. But for energy production this waste product is the valuable input. Incineration of biomass Incineration of biomass can be as easy as installing a wood stove in your house and fuel it with locally harvested timber. This can directly save you large amounts of gas for heating your home. But there are more sophisticated techniques available. Some high efficiency stoves combine heating their direct environment with heating tap water and water for central heating in the rest of the house. Other stoves are fuelled by wood chips or so called pellets (pressed wood shavings or sawdust) and can have efficiencies of nearly 98% with clean burning and hardly any harmful emissions. Biomass digestion installation

2 The smaller stoves, fuelled by clean wood or pellets, generally only produce heat, which is used either directly or for warm water. Bigger stoves also have the opportunity to produce electricity and are often capable of using a higher variety of biomass for burning. Typically pruning waste is used in these bigger stoves that can deliver heat and electricity to a swimming pool or even a hospital. Digestion of biomass Incineration of biomass is, for efficiency sake, mainly based on wood, digestion can be fuelled by all sorts of organic materials, especially those we usually consider as being waste. An important determinant in this is whether the waste stream is wet or dry. The possibility of adding wet waste streams such as kitchen residues and manure, makes digestion suitable for densely inhabited and farmed areas, especially if dry wood sources are limited. The organic material is put in an air-sealed silo, the digester, and is heated and stirred. The bacteria feed on the material and produce biogas. This biogas can be used in different ways to deliver energy. It can be used in a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) generator to generate both electricity and useful heat. The biogas can also be converted to green gas, which has a natural gas quality, for use in transportation or conventional energy conversion. Scale A 1 Mw wood stove uses 4,000 tons of wood chips per year. This is enough to heat over 500 houses. A typical small scale manure digestion installation uses 35,000 tons of manure annually (app. 120 cows). This will produce 1,120,000 m3 of biogas. After conversion to natural gas quality, 800,000 m3 is available for heating and cooking. This is enough to replace the natural gas use of 500 households. Benefits for the community Costs The investment costs for stoves and digesters are highly dependent on the intended yield. Especially digestion needs a certain scale in order to be cost-effective. Stoves are available from small sizes at low investment, 1.000,00 for a household stove fuelled by timber blocks. A typical digestion installation for mixed materials has an average investment of ,00. Both the digesters and big stoves and their respective fuel stocks need considerable space. Technical life expectancy of a digester is around 15 years, whereas payback time can be just 8 years. Revenues Organic material contains relatively large amounts of energy Making use of organic waste saves you the usual fee on waste disposal Energy from organic material is carbon neutral Use of local biomass can significantly reduce your gas costs (up to 40%)

3 Social aspects Everybody can provide the community with organic material in a low-profile manner Providing fuel to the stove or digester gives a feeling of contribution to the community s energy production, this contribution is more continuous than one-time investment in solar or wind energy. Where has it been implemented? Examples CoSE communities In the villages of Bocs, Hungary, and Strem, Austria, energy from household wood stoves is an important source. The villages of Strem, Austria, and Beckerich, Luxemburg, both have a biomass digestion installation in operation. In Strem the gas is upgraded to natural gas quality for use in cars. In Beckerich 130 buildings are connected to district heating and a wood chips stove. In a school project in Bocs, Hungary, the children have collected used vegetable oil to be used in a CHP generator. Success and fail factors for implementation Digestion and incineration of biomass are especially beneficial if the biomass is locally available, without costs or at low prices. If biomass needs to be taken in over greater distance, costs will rise quickly. In continues running digestion installations, downtime because of a lack of bacterial activity is the main fail factor. The bacteria in the installation eat the added organic material to produce the desired biogas. In order for the bacteria to be in good shape and produce efficiently it is important to give them the right diet. Different types of bacteria grow well on different mixtures of organic material. Choose your sources and bacteria carefully and pay attention to what you feed them. If you randomly add organic material of all sorts in different quantities you can quickly kill all bacterial activity and hence the biogas production. If you plan to non-continuously run a digestion installation bacterial die-off in between runs is an important factor to take into account. You may need to add bacteria every time you start a digestion run. How to get started? European legislation The European Commission (EC) sets a target of 20 per cent renewables within the EU by Renewables include wind, solar, hydroelectric and tidal power as well as geothermal energy and biomass. Increasing the share of renewables in the EU will contribute in cutting down greenhouse emissions and make it less dependent on imported energy. To reach this ambitious goal the EC has presented the 2009 Renewable Energy Directive. Besides setting a target, the Directive also improves the legal framework for promoting renewable electricity, requires national

4 action plans that establish pathways for the development of renewable energy sources including bioenergy, creates cooperation mechanisms to help achieve the targets cost effectively and establishes the sustainability criteria for biofuels. Each Member State has a national target, which differs between them. Annex I of the 2009 Renewable Energy Directive shows the various national targets. An annual report on the progress of each Member State is presented on the website of the EC. These reports include various aspects such as the current share of renewables, updates on national legislation, all support measures taken, system of guarantees of origin, administrative procedures and many other relevant national measures. Under further reading a link to the national reports can be found. Local knowledge with CoSE partners The CoSE partner communities discussed in the examples above can be contacted for questions about energy generation from biomass. Whether you want some more information on technical specifications, raising funds or organising the community, feel free to get in touch with them. Finding partners Several CoSE partner communities have indicated they are working on biomass systems. You can contact these communities for ideas or ask about their experiences so far. The village of Bukkaranyos, Hungary has the ambition to become independent in terms of energy, they want to realise this partly by applying biomass digestion with the wastes of the town and 30 small farms. The Dutch village of Ommerkanaal is performing an investigation on how they can join forces with local farmers to produce energy from manure digestion. The community is assisted by a nearby University. One of the target uses of the biogas is a community car. The town of Ashton Hayes in United Kingdom would like to provide their village hall with energy from a biomass gasifier and CHP system. The village of Bocs, Hungary, is in the process of installing a biomass digestion installation. This installation will be powered by dry grass and the generated heat will be used in community buildings such as the school and sports centre. Currently they are running a pilot. Building a strategy and plan In designing a strategy or plan to realise an energy-from-biomass project, several steps are important to consider. The following steps provide assistance and should by no means be interpreted as fixed. Identify the sources of organic (waste) material in your community: types and quantities. Select a suitable technique for energy production, digestion or incineration, and appropriate size. The choice for a certain system should be based on at least the following aspects: The available budget Required investment for each system, in the community context Sources and types of organic material available Characteristics of energy use in the community; how can the community as a whole benefit most efficiently from a stove or digester?

5 Finding and acquiring a suitable location. Several factors might influence the siting: Optimisation of energy production. Accessibility for delivery of input materials Smell production Visual influence Consulting various stakeholders (locals, municipality, local businesses), to see whether they are interested in or have resistance against this form of renewable energy production or want to cooperate. Consider the intended output, whether it be biogas, heat or electricity by means of a combined heat and power installation. Seeking the required local, regional and/or national permits. Demonstrate the economic viability of the project Finding a manufacturer Preparing the construction site The actual construction of the installation Effectively operating and maintaining the installation Further reading European legislation Homepage: Progress reports: Installation permits: Renewable Energy Directive: uri=oj:l:2009:140:0016:01:en:html European bio-energy associations: European Biomass Association: European Biomass Industry Association: List of European and national bio-energy associations: Trends in bio-energy production European Solid Biomass Barometer: European Biogas Barometer:

6 Network Communities of a sustainable Europe (CoSE) International network of RURAL villages and URBAN neighborhoods for bottom-up approach An initiative of the communities of: Ashton Hayes (village in Cheshire-West, United Kingdom) Beckerich (municipality-village in Luxemburg Betlejem (quarter of Reda, near Gdansk, in Poland Bӧcs and Bükkaranyos (municipality-villages in Bükk-Mak-Miskolc-Region, Hungary) De Stoere Houtman (quarter of Arnhem, the Netherlands) Measolle (village in France) Ommerkanaal (village of Overijssel, the Netherlands) Strem (municipality-village in Ӧko-Energie-Bürgerland, Austria) Contact: Jaap Huurman De Stoere Houtman De Houtmanstraat PJ Arnhem Netherlands jaaphuurman@hotmail.com Other communities invited into the network: Blacon (quarter of Chester, United Kingdom Feldheim (invited, village of Treuenbrietzen, Germany) Frankenwald (invited, village near Hof, Germany) Jühnde ( invited, independent village in Germany) Schönau (Schwarzwald, Germany) Vauban (quarter of Freiburg, Germany) For more information, see: Published: March 2013