English - Komatsu Forest

There’s a great deal of combustible material in the forests of
America, with as much as 50 tons of biomass per acre (120 tons
per hectare).
pine beetle infestation is the reason
in Canada. Thinning damaged
trees and rapidly removing
infested timber is important
in the fight to stop the beetle’s
spread.
THINNING IS EVEN increasing
in Europe, though mostly due to
increased demand for biomass
fuel and new harvesting methods
are on the horizon. Antti
Asikainen, a professor at Finnish
forestry research institute Metla,
believes interest in small diameter
timber harvested using multi-tree
accumulators, as well as
the clearing of older stands, will
increase. Asikainen has a theory
as to why the demand for biomass
fuel has not been the driving
force in North America.
“North America, and even
Russia, have much forest and get
as much bioenergy as they need
from sawmills without the need
to specifically harvest the forest
for biomass fuel,” he explains.
Don Gosnell at the Ministry
of Forest and Range in British
Columbia, Canada confirms
this idea and explains that most
sawmills use the waste from
sawing, such as sawdust, wood
28 JUST FOREST NO 4 • 2007
chips, and even bark, to produce
heat and electricity as the material
needs to be dealt with in some
way or other. However, according
to Gosnell, electricity is so
cheap (about 3.5 cents per kilowatt
hour) that it’s unprofitable
to produce electricity from waste
if it has to be transported to the
generating facility.
Asikainen, on the other
hand, sees development gathering
momentum in Europe, with
more and more countries in Central
Europe, including Italy and
Austria, and even Poland, harvesting
round timber and forest
residues simultaneously. Wood
chips are generally produced at
landings, before transportation.
Asikainen also sees greater interest
in Europe for stumps, which
have greater energy value than
other forest residues.
ROLF BJÖRHEDEN heads a biomass
fuel project at Swedish
research institute Skogforsk and
believes development must be
toward increased optimization
and increased integration of biomass
fuel management with
other forestry. Björheden believes
biomass harvesting will be
Canada produces enormous amounts of sawmill waste. So much
that it’s currently unprofitable to harvest biomass from the forests.
New assortments will be handled by existing machines parallel to
conventional harvesting.
integrated with other harvesting
using existing machines, a
matter on which Asikainen also
agrees, adding that conventional
forest machines, with necessary
adaptations for handling biomass,
are the route to take for the
foreseeable future. r