With the increased interest in transitioning heat boilers from using fossil fuels to wood fuel the Bioenergy Association of NZ has been receiving a significant increase in enquiries. To help answer questions about technology, fuel availability and consenting, the Association has expanded the Wood Energy Knowledge Centre which is hosted on the UsewoodfuelNZ portal www.usewoodfuel.org.nz.

This website is a portal to information on the use of solid biofuels to produce heat. It is hosted by the Bioenergy Association. Brian Cox, executive officer of the Bioenergy Association said that “the big increase in enquiries is from the forestry sector who are seeing the opportunities for making money from the biomass which currently they are leaving on the ground when they harvest trees.”

The association has been collecting questions arising from enquiries from the public, consultants and potential heat plant owners and has collected the answers into Technical Notes which are accessed by rollover of key words on the website. EECA has been funding the development of additional Technical Notes.

EECA has also been funding the extension of the Wood Energy Knowledge Centre which is a catalogued and searchable library of reports, documents, webinar presentations and workshop proceedings that have been produced or sourced by the association over the last 20 years. New material is added every week.

Source: Bioenergy Association