Why not let wood fuel your mind?

TRAILERS full of timber can be seen moving on roads across the country these days, as people secure their wood supplies for winter firing and the unmistakeable whine of the chainsaw echoes through the land.

Wood fuel is becoming more and more popular for home heating in Ireland. Over recent years, many homeowners, hotels and other businesses have made the switch to wood to replace imported oil and coal. Schemes run by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEI) have provided much of the impetus for this change.

The rising price of heating oil is also forcing people to look at alternative fuel sources and there seems to be an increasing demand for wood-burning stoves.

Ireland has excellent wood growing conditions. Wood as a source of energy would help make Ireland independent of international energy prices. The sales line by promoters is that modern, wood-fuelled heating systems offer the same level of comfort, convenience and reliability as oil, or gas boiler systems.

We still import about 90% of our energy requirements, compared to an EU average of 50%. Wood as a source of heat – rather than the production of electricity – has the largest potential, according to SEI. And, every sawmill in Ireland could have its own on-site power and pellet plant, with decent financial benefits.

If the same trend takes place here as in other European countries, energy crops may well displace food as the main one on Irish farms, according to Teagasc.

Wood energy can help in a big way to reduce the amount of imported fossil fuel ensuring Ireland’s long-term energy security.

Farmers, especially, are in a good position to benefit, both as growers of energy wood and as users of cost-effective wood energy. Ireland’s soil and climatic conditions are excellent for timber growth. Changing farm conditions may also give landowners the opportunity to produce wood fuel as a main crop.

The Inchydoney Island and Spa Hotel, near Clonakilty, Co Cork, showed the way to the hospitality sector a few years ago by installing the biggest wood heating system in the country, at the time.

Other hotels with huge energy bills and falling incomes, due to the recession, have either followed suit, or are seriously looking at similar ways of reducing costs.

Experts are now saying, in future, many small towns could have a wood power plant, managed and maintained with local labour and powered by locally-produced wood pellets and chips.

Up to now, however, we have been slow to recognise and develop wood fuel’s full potential.

Austria, Sweden and Finland currently lead the way in using wood fuel, with entrepreneurs, often groups of local farmers, agri-cooperatives and individuals, recognising the potential and establishing a total energy package for local communities and businesses.

Taking an all-inclusive approach, they manage the fuel supply, plant, harvest, produce and transport the fuel and, often, are also responsible for supplying and maintaining the wood boilers.

With about 16,000 farmers involved in forestry and a doubling of those involved by 2030, Ireland has huge potential for growth in this area.

Refined fuels such as wood chips, pellets and briquettes (processed sawdust), offer many advantages, being compact, clean, and easy to store and they have a very high energy content.

Sawmills in Scandanavian countries are advanced in the technology they use to produce pellets from what was previously viewed as waste, which they had often paid people to take away. They now turn sawdust, pulpwood and forest thinnings into profits.

Meanwhile, the Green energy company, Rural Generation, has become the first woodchip supplier in Ireland to receive wood fuel quality assurance certification (WFQA) from the National Standards Authority of Ireland. The scheme covers all types of wood fuel, including pellets, chips, logs and briquettes, and assures consumers they are buying a quality fuel of consistent quality.

John Gilliland, chairman, Rural Generation, says the wood fuel industry has grown significantly in Ireland in recent years, successfully penetrating into households, commercial premises, Government organisations and industrial operations. The current demand for woodchips alone is estimated to be approximately 75,000 tonnes annually.

“Through the use of woodchips, companies, and organisations can not only vastly reduce their dependence on imported fossil fuels, they can also reduce their heat and energy costs and their carbon dioxide emissions too,” he adds.

Speaking at the presentation, the Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Seán Connick said there were plentiful supplies of wood fuel in forests which had been established over the past two decades under forestry schemes.