Woody biomass supply potential for thermal power plants in Japan

Biomass energy is one of mitigation method of CO₂ reduction. In Japan, it aimed to reduce fossil fuels supply 670,000 kL of crude oil equivalent in thermal power plants and 340,000 kL of crude oil equivalent in the utilization of heat by biomass. It was decided to use 25% or more of the forestry products such as logging residues. Japanese government aim to supply 634 PJ of woody biomass for power generation in 2010. This amount of energy accounts for 2.8% of total primary energy. More than 68% of Japan is covered by forests, and more than 40% of these forests are plantations. But the use of woody biomass is limited because it is still not seen as economically viable. In this article, we developed a large scale forestry economic model which can estimate the wood chips supply for coal thermal power plants across all around Japan. By using this model, wood chips supply potential is currently 32,000 m³/year and supply will increase drastically when wood chips price increase or carbon credit is installed and we found that biomass production of 15 PJ that is the numeric target of Japanese government is possible. Especially, the lengthening of rotation period of forestry and the decrease of wood chips transportation cost is important for wood chips use in coal thermal plant.