Embodied Transport Energy Analysis Of
Imported Wood Pellets
Author(s)
A. Duffy & M. Conroy
Abstract
The Irish Government has recently introduced a series of capital grants to boost
the uptake of domestic wood-pellet technologies in order to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. These have proved popular and have encouraged a significant
number of people to switch from gas- and oil-fired boilers to the cleaner fuel.
The demand for wood-pellets has, however, greatly exceeded the national
capacity for production. The market for wood pellets elsewhere in Europe is also
tight and, consequently, a large proportion of Irish pellets are sourced in Canada.
This presents possible problems: the carbon emissions associated with longdistance
transport may significantly offset the expected environmental benefits;
and the resulting need to purchase carbon credits may impact on the Irish
Government’s rationale for promoting the technology. This paper describes a
process-based embodied energy analysis which indicates that the difference in
transport embodied energy and CO2 emissions between imported and
domestically produced wood pellets is up to 1,403MJ/tonne and 108kg/tonne
respectively. Imported pellets have up to four times more embodied energy than
those that are domestically-produced. Although this erodes their environmental
credentials, it is still a significant improvement when compared to displaced
conventional fuels; for example, it is equivalent to 22% of natural gas CO2
emissions. An economic analysis of present value indicates that the short-term
cost to the Irish exchequer of these increased emissions is small.
Keywords: wood pellets, carbon dioxide, transport, embodied energy, cost,
policy.
Keywords
wood pellets, carbon dioxide, transport, embodied energy, cost,
policy.
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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