Because nearly 70% of Japan’s land area is covered with forests, Japan looks to possess abundant forest resources apparently, but owing to steep mountainous geography, costs for logging and transportation are so large that a great portion of forest wood residue such as thinned wood has been left over as waste until now. Today, nearly 8 million ton of forest residue is generated every year, but barely 1 % of it is being used by pulp industry.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has been implementing a program for proof experiment project of co-firing of forest residue at several coal-burning power stations, so as to promote utilization of forest residue. In FY2009, some three-billion-yen subsidy was allocated for the project that would be carried out at selected six coal-burning power stations, where the ratio of biomass chips to coal would be in the range of 0.5 ~ 2 %. (See Table)

There appears one steel maker standing with traditional electric power businesses selected for carrying out the project. Generally, coal-burning power plants are in operation in most of steel works today. For example, at the Kamaishi Work of the Nippon Steel Company, annually 250,000 ton of coal is burnt at a power plant of 149,000 kW output capacity. NSC estimated that it would be possible to reduce annual coal consumption by 2 % by burning 5,000 ton of forest residue, which would also contribute to the reduction of CO2 emission.

Reportedly, it is estimated that annually 115,900 ton of CO2 emission would be cut down by the six power stations put together. Following after the six power stations, biomass-coal co-firing power generation will be started in FY2012 at the Hitachi-Naka Power Station of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). TEPCO estimated that the co-firing would be able to reduce CO2 emission by 110,000 ton annually, by burning 70,000 ton of woody biomass.

Power generation business by co-firing of forest residue with coal would not only be able to reduce CO2 emission but also it would be certainly effective for revitalization of local community. Owing to the development of this power business, new jobs and employments would be created, including collection and transportation of forest residue and thinned wood, road construction in the forests, woody pellets manufacturing from woody waste and so on.

Table Proof project for biomass-coal co-firing power generation using forestry residue (by METI, FY2009)

Fig. Annually Generated Forest Residue and Present Use

Fig. Planned biomass consumption at the coal burning power stations

Fig. Planned reduction of CO2 emission at the coal burning power stations

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