Wood Pellet Market shows growth

Burning soft pellets has become a popular in the central and northern Europe for heat energy and electricity, and gives rise to significant environmental and economic gains. Wood pellets are clean, CO2-neutral and available fuel, for the most part created from sawing wood and wood chips, compressed under high pressure level without using paste or something added. They are cylindrical, with diameter 6-10 mm and 10-30 mm in length. The high imposition of standards of the fuel pellets and good contraction is a cost-beneficial to transfer them and use in automatic operation for the production of heat and electricity from private homes to large-scale installations. 

With rapid movements developing market, they are one of the leading technologies to become greater size of biomass in Europe and beyond, especially in the heat. Pellets are also a great method to use local resources and bestow a quality on reducing CO2. The progressing in the European market of pellets comes out successful. Growth of approximately 25% -30% is expected in Germany and Austria in 2009.

Frame of reference in the European Policy

Political situation EU is beneficial to update the energy market of biomass in heating and electricity sector, as it facilitate to the challenges of climate change and cleaning the environment, abate dependence on imports and supports local economy.
 The 27 Member States of the European Union set themselves ambitious targets to change resulting in an increase the share of renewable in the production and heat, and an increase of 22% energy and 20% of heat from renewable sources in overall energy mix by 2020.
 In December 2008 the European Parliament adopted a new directive to promote renewable energy. The bill is to provide approximately 20% of the final consumer of renewable energy in the EU in 2020. The Directive also sets targets for each EU member states, ranging from 10% to 49%.
In the future, discusses other important policy initiatives of the European Union - COM (2005) 628. The European Parliament plans to revise the Directive on the energy efficiency of buildings. 
Biomass plays a strategic role in achieving the EU targets on renewable energy, and soft wood pellets. That is the main to making this happen.

Production capacity and demand for wood pellets

In the past few years, wood pellets production is increasing worldwide, particularly in Europe and North America. Significant exporters of pellets are Canada and Russia, while the major importers of wood pellets are Denmark, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands.

 Experts estimate that the production capabilities in all 27 EU member states amounts to about 9 million tonns (2007). Globally, it might be 12-14 million tonns of capacity.
The leading producer countries of pellets in the EU are Sweden (1.7 million tons), Germany (900,000 tonnes) and Austria (800,000 tonnes). In the 1990's, from the earliest days of the market in Europe, Sweden and Austria were the leading countries for the production of pellets. Great prospect for the production of pellets is expected in countries such as France, Spain, Latvia, Estonia and Poland. In the meantime, Russia has increased its production capacities - from 50,000 tons in 2005 to 550,000 tons in 2007 - almost all of it spent on export. According to statistics, in 2008 the production plants of Canada amounted to nearly 1.3 million tons of pellets.

 In terms of pellet consumption, Sweden, Germany and Austria occupied the leading position in Europe. Recently, there has been sweeping development in the market in France. Italy has become the main consumer of pellets, due to the raising number of installed pellet stoves (around 800,000 a furnace to date). The annual level of expense of pellets in Europe is currently about 6 million tonns. At the North American market in 2008 expended about 2.3 million tonns of wood pellets, and about 2 million tons this product in the United States.