A survey analysis of the wood pellet industry in Finland: Future perspectives

Svetlana Proskurina, Eija Alakangas, Jussi Heinimö, Mirja Mikkilä and Esa Vakkilainen

Energy, 2017, vol. 118, issue C, 692-704

Abstract: Finland has the greatest forest cover of European countries and thus considerable raw material potential for wood pellet market development. Wood pellet production and consumption volumes in the country have increased steadily during the last decades. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the current status of the Finnish wood pellet business and discuss the main opportunities and challenges facing future development of the industry. The paper collects and revises data on the Finnish wood pellet market based on the results of a survey of nearly 60 wood pellet experts. The results show that neglect of policy support and a lack of suitable regulation are the key factors inhibiting Finnish wood pellet industry development. Currently, wood pellets are not economically competitive with other fuels. However, Finnish wood pellet markets seem promising if challenges such as high raw material costs and competitiveness with other fuels, especially for household users, are addressed. The country has the potential to become a more important producer and consumer on European wood pellet markets if effective policy support and a suitable regulatory framework are formulated.

Keywords: Pellets; Market; Finland; Bioenergy; Combined heat and power; Biomass (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421631547X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:118:y:2017:i:c:p:692-704

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.10.102

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().