Wood energy – from the camp fire to pellet heating

The history of wood energy begins with the primeval campfire. Today significantly more efficient technologies are available for using wood to produce heat and electricity.

In 2011, some 7 percent of Germany’s heat consumption and around 1.9 percent of its electricity consumption was covered by wood energy. Overall wood energy avoided 60,1 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2011. In view of rising prices for fossil energy sources, undeveloped potential from forest and waste wood is available for heat generation.

Wood has traditionally been used above all as a heat supplier – for space heating, hot water or process heat in industrial use. Today, detached houses and multi-family dwellings can be cleanly and efficiently heated with wood pellet heating systems. The modern and fully automatic technology of pellet stoves ensures that fine dust levels and CO2 emissions remain far below the legal limit values. Incorrectly handled firewood stoves and fireplaces are problematic. Therefore, replacement of old wood stoves with modern wood heating systems (pellet heating systems, wood chip heating systems, firewood gasifiers) is an ideal  way, both to reduce fine dust emissions and to use wood more efficiently.

Larger wood-fired combined heat and power stations (CHP) can be used to simultaneously produce electricity and heat for housing estates and city districts through cogeneration. A further technology is the production of energy-rich wood gas. This is generated when wood is heated out of contact with air. However, its use in combined heat and power stations is still associated with technical and economic risks.