As fuel prices rise, demand for alternative energy sources naturally grows. One such alternative energy for those burning fossil fuels in an industrial application is to burn woody biomass instead. Not surprisingly, pulp and paper manufacturers—many of whom are vertically integrated and thus own their primary input material, wood—around the world are using more woody biomass to fuel their own industrial applications.

Today’s market size is the volume of woody biomass—bark, sawdust, wood chips, forest residues and the like—used by the pulp and paper industry globally in 2009.

Geographic reference: World
Year: 2009
Market size: 1,400 trillion British Thermal Units which is roughly equal to 75 million oven dried metric tons.
Source: “Biomass Market Update – 4Q/2009,” Wood Resource Quarterly – 4Q/2009, page 10, available online here.
Original source: Wood Resources International
Posted on October 3, 2011