Comparison With North America Although Canada showed no dramatic increase in plant number, production capacity has been increasing consistently. The number of plants in Canada is almost half of that in Japan, while the US has about the same number of plants as Japan. Production capacity in the US in 2011 has decreased even though the number of plants has increased. Within Canada and the US, the biggest plant capacity in 2011 was found in Georgia, US, with a capacity of 750,000 tonnes/year, whereas the smallest capacity of 10,000 tonnes/year was found in several places in the US. In Canada, the total production capacity for 2011 was 2.958 million tonnes, which is almost 29 times of the production capacity of Japan. In the US, total production capacity in 2011 was 5.481 million tonnes, which is almost 50 times that of Japan.
Comparison With Asian Countries The wood pellet industry has not been active in Asian countries outside of China and North Korea. In China, both production capacity and number of plants have increased dramatically recently. This is because since 2000, the Chinese government has been promoting biomass as an energy policy to meet greatly increased demands from its rapid economic expansion. In 2011, the largest production capacity plant was constructed in Jiangsu, with a capacity of 120,000 tonnes/year. On the other hand, the smallest plant is in Heilongjiang with a production capacity of 12,000 tonnes/ year. The total capacity of 17 plants in China is 792,000 tonnes/year, which is almost 7.8 times that of Japan. In North Korea, a moderate increase was found in both the number of plants and production capacity. Since 2010, as a national policy, the North Korean
government has set a target to reduce 30 percent of carbon dioxide Japanese pellet emissions by 2020, together with plants are small the introduction of wood biomass compared to those of other countries. energy. As a national energy policy, the government aims to reduce fossil fuel usage from 83 to 61 percent, and increase renewable energy usage from 2.4 to 11 percent by 2030. Therefore, it is expected that the wood pellet plants in North Korea will increase considerably in the future. With regard to wood pellet production capacity per capita, Japan produces less than one kg/ capita, which is quite small when compared to other major countries. This result suggests that pellets have not been popularised in Japan. The first reason that Japanese pellet It is clear that compared to other plants are quite small when compared to countries, there are many small-scale those in other countries is that the main plants widely dispersed over Japan. purpose of pellet manufacturing is not However, pellet production is not promoted intended for energy production. Instead, in Japan. it is ancillary to the lumber industry for the processing of wood waste. The second reason is a difficulty in Plant Scale & Pellet Price collecting raw material for wood pellet due The scale of plant capacity relates to to forest management problems. Japanese plant management. Pellet production forestry has been specialised for timber cost is relative to the plant capacity; industries, but due to the low efficiency as plant capacity increase, production of timber extraction, timber prices have cost tends to decrease. been relatively high compared to other Currently, the pellet price in Japan countries. This gave rise to an influx of is approximately between 25-63 yen/kg cheap foreign timber into Japan, and (excluding transportation cost). Compared a resulting drop in the market share of to the prices in other countries, this is domestic lumber to 18.2 percent in 2000. higher by roughly 20-25 yen/kg (excluding As the result, forestry has declined and transportation cost). Most of the production the value of native forest is being lost. capacities of Japanese pellet plants are The total forest area of Japan is about less than 2,000 tonnes/year which results 250,000 sq km, which is about 66 percent in high prices. of the total area. Austria, as a geographically For instance, a feasibility study similar country, has a total forest area of conducted in Ehime prefecture proved only 38,400 sq km. However, the country’s that pellet price cannot be lower than lumber production is almost equal to that 30yen/kg at plants with capacities of 500 of Japan. Moreover, as of 2011, Austria tonnes/year or less without government has a more than one million tonne total subsidies. However, expanding the capacity pellet production capacity. and improving efficiency of production can The major difference between Japan reduce production costs since specific and Austria is the productivity of forestry. In material cost can be absorbed. www.fdmasia.com | FDM ASIA  may/jun 2012
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Wood & Sustainability