CTO Assessment - European Commission

WARMIA & MAZURY
Biomass utilisation
for energy purposes
EC BALTIC RENEWABLE ENERGY CENTRE • RECEPOL • Centre of Excellence
ul. Reduta Zbik 5 • 80 - 761 Gdansk • Poland
Tel./Fax.: +48 58 301 57 88 • E-Mail: gdansk@ecbrec.pl • Website:www.ecbrec.pl
The Region of Warmia and Mazury is located
in North East Poland and has a
structure of fuel consumption for heat production
that is dominated by coal. Other
major fuels include light oil and in larger
towns also natural gas is used. District
heating is common even in rural areas of
this region which is among the least industrialised
of Poland, and where there is high
unemployment especially in rural areas.
This project describes how biomass district
heating plants (DHP) have been developed
in the region to replace traditional
fuels with a more environmental source of
energy, at a time where refurbishment, or
even replacement, of the old coal district
heating systems is needed anyway for a
significant amount of them.
Main motivations
The region is characterised by availability
of wood fuels derived from forestry and
local wood industry and a significant surplus
of straw existing in the agricultural
sector (forestation in 2001 was 30%),
there was the opportunity to put an end to
the heavy reliance on local fossil fuels.
The typical owners of local district heating
systems are local authorities, which in that
region seem to be often poorer than in other
regions of the country. As such, local investors
have to search for external funding,
which since the end of 90’s is hardly
available for fossil fuels while it can be
accessed for RES projects. Typically this
difficult situation led to biomass replacing
the old heating systems, while at the same
time creating new jobs.
The Project
Having gained inspiration and knowledge
of modern applications of biomass technologies
already implemented especially in
the EU, the regional authorities of Warmia
& Mazury recognised the opportunities for
the wider deployment of renewable energy
in the region. The political will to stimulate
wider deployment of biomass technologies
was then translated into allocation of a
high priority by the Regional authorities
set in the list of priority investment to be
co-funded by the Regional Fund for Environmental
Protection. At the end of 90-
ties some pilot investment projects were
developed, that later became a basis for
spreading out good practices and further
replication in other communes of Warmia
& Mazury.
Innovative aspects
The first projects have been to a certain
extent the direct replications of technological
solutions from the EU. However, growing
interest in the utilisation of biomass
for heat production in the region led to
using some local engineering and manufacturing
capacities and using some locally
invented technological improvements helping
to decrease the cost of biomass application
while improving their efficiency.
Challenges
A major barrier faced especially in the
initial period of the development of biomass
DHP in the region was a mental
barrier among the local decision–makers.
Typical prejudices about biomass
resulted from the lack of knowledge and
a strong perception of coal or gas/oil as
the only modern and secure options for
local energy production. Especially the
utilisation of straw faced a strong distrust
as it was believed to have too low
calorific value and also perhaps considered
as going back to “ stone age technology”.
Financing tools to support biomass
projects on the regional level were provided
by the Regional Environmental
Protection Fund. At the end of the 90’s
they started to provide soft loans and
subsidies with a high priority given to
biomass projects. At an early stage, special
conditions were created for local
authorities, allowing to write off up to
50% of debt provided that these funds
are then used for further environmental
investments. First investments were
characterised by high costs typical to applications
of new technologies and the
lack of experience in this field. However,
with a growing number of biomass investments,
investment costs of further
replication projects decreased (e.g. by
30 % in case of some straw-fired installations).
Replication Potential
Warmia & Mazury Region can be used as
good example for the other regions of Poland
and other countries of CEECs. It seems
that regional authorities may indeed play
an important role in the deployment of RES
technologies at a local level especially if
they can access some regional financing
schemes such as environmental funds.
Boosting Regional Bioenergy Utilization
(1999 – 2003)
The efforts of Warmia and Mazury regional
authorities have been well in line
with the Polish National RES Strategy
endorsed by the Council of Ministers in
2000 and approved by the Polish Parliament
in August 2001 that set a target to
increase the share of RES in the primary
energy balance of Poland from 2.5% in
1999 to 7.5% in 2010. In 1999-2003 in
the Region of Warmia and Mazury over
30 local biomass DHP were installed with
the total capacity of 90 MW.
80 CTO - Showcase