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A Practical Guide for Tracking Wood-Using Bioenergy Markets

Forisk Consulting tracks wood-consuming bioenergy projects across the U.S.  As of July 30, 2010, Forisk tracks 363 wood-consuming, announced projects. These projects represent the potential for an additional 121 million tons/year of wood use by 2020.  However, applying Forisk’s viability screen, explained below, projects representing only 68.4 million tons/year are likely to be online by 2020.  This provides a more realistic projection of demand so that policy makers can accurately understand the impacts of biomass energy policy on the resource and other markets.

The graph below depicts the likely demand versus the announced demand.  Forisk’s latest monthly report is available here (PDF).

Estimated Wood Use By Announced Facility

The Methodology Explained

Basic, practical screening of wood-consuming projects indicates that current expectations for wood-based bioenergy markets exceed the likely capacity of these markets to produce energy. Why? The process for locating, financing, constructing and operating these projects is complicated and difficult. This white paper introduces a basic methodology for screening wood-consuming projects across two criteria that emphasize the practical realities of developing bioenergy markets:

  • Technology: projects that employ currently viable technology pass the technology screen. These include pelletizing technology and wood-to-electricity projects. Cellulosic ethanol from wood feedstock is still a developing technology and is currently not operational.
  • Status: projects that are operational, under construction, or received or secured two or more necessary elements for advancing towards operations pass the status screen.

A brief case study from April 2010 applies the screen to 129 announced or operating wood-consuming bioenergy projects in the US South. These projects represent potential, incremental wood use of 47 million tons per year by 2020. Based on Forisk analysis, projects representing only 18.7 million tons per year pass the basic screening methodology. This represents less than 40% of the potential, announced wood demand from bioenergy projects.

A “Quick Reference Guide” (PDF) for applying this screen to individual projects and new announcements is provided.

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