Economic Assessment and Associated Barriers for Wood Bioenergy in Matsusaka Power Plant

摘要

The use of renewable energy is being widely promoted as a countermeasure for global warming. Among renewable energies, wood biomass is considered as an important resource. This is due to its abundant amount in Japan as well as its contribution in revitalizing forests and forest products industries through energy utilization of wood biomass. The conversion of biomass to useful forms of energy, also called bioenergy- can be achieved by using a number of different technological solutions. In Japan, direct combustion or gasification is considered to be the promising technologies for the small-scale energy plants for wood biomass. However, the gasification technologies are still at the level of demonstration, whereas, power generation and thermal utilization by direct combustion of wood biomass and a steam turbine is at the level of diffusion.