Polish authorities tightened the control over the origin of burnt biomass
The serious conflict is brewing up in the energy sector of Poland. The Polish Energy Regulatory Office tightened the criteria for support of energy produced from biomass.
Now the companies must prove that during their production they do not use full timber. Otherwise, the plants will not receive green certificates, which afterwards can then be sold.
According to Ukrainian Biofuel Portal pellets-wood.com, this order issued at the end of 2012, was not properly worded and could be interpreted dubiously. It was said that from December 31, 2012 the producers of heat and electricity have been forbidden to burn the wood material, which appeared during intended forest fragmentation. However, it was not stated what documents were necessary for proving the origin of biomass burned in boilers, - says Sergey Kozlov, the leading analyst of Ukrainian Biofuel Portal. The detailed list of required documents was published in June 18, 2013. Now the enterprises, a few months after the production of energy, must receive from their suppliers of biomass the documents confirming that the biofuels which they bought had not been made of forbidden (according to the released order) timber. It could be very problematic to get such documents, given that this claim was not made before.
Why did the government decide to tighten the order? After the conversation with its representatives it was revealed: the Polish authorities suspect that despite the ban the energy producers still burn full timber, and then these companies ask to provide more support. The officials deny that there is such a hypothesis. However, according to unofficial reports, after the wave of speculations on the market of green certificates, the large power industry concentrated in hand of State Treasury and foreign investors lost credibility.
This game is for big money. If the plant does not prove the origin of biomass used, then it will not be provided with the support given to green energy producers. Currently the minimum rate per megawatt-hour is 145 PLN. Last year the amount of support for power plants using biomass was about 2 billion zloty.
Power producing companies complain about the announce of the Energy Regulatory that their head will personally review and evaluate confirmation documents. According to Slavomir Krystek, the director of Economic Society of Polish Power Plants, in order to retroactively consider a huge amount of expected documents, the Regulatory will need to involve the whole staff of people, yet there are not so many workers in the office to be involved.
Another problem is the regulation requires that all issues regarding support which were initiated but not completed by December 31, 2012 must be resolved according to the new order.
The Ministry of Economy decided to ban the use of high-grade wood for energy purposes after the protests of timber industry representatives and their complaints about wasting wood by energy companies.
Polish authorities tightened the control over the origin of burnt biomass
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