Together with nuclear energy, bioenergy is an important means of responding to the growing need for electricity and increasingly stringent climate requirements. The European Commission has set the target of doubling the use of renewable energy and bioenergy by 2010.

Bioenergy in European countries now covers, on average, about five per cent of energy production. In Finland as much as a fifth of electricity and heat production is based on biofuels, the reason being that a suitable fuel is created as a by-product from paper, wood products and fellings.

"When the forest industry uses only the cellulose from wood for making paper, the rest of the wood and logging waste are left over for utilization in the chemical recovery system at the pulp mill and in other energy production. A great deal of industry and research relating to bioenergy has been created in Finland," says Kai Sipilä, a research professor at VTT.

Bioenergy arouses hopes

The Network of Excellence funded by the European Union condenses and speeds up bioenergy research, which is scattered over various countries. The network covers eight European countries and includes about 150 researchers. Now in its third year, it is organized from Finland by VTT.

Bioenergy is arousing hopes in researchers. Sipilä believes that Finland will be able to exploit biofuels commercially to a greater extent in the future. Biofuels for traffic are a particular target of commercial interest.

"The market is growing as the use of green electricity and green fuel increases. Emissions trading has also improved the position of bioenergy. It can open up new business opportunities for the forestry and energy clusters both in Europe and globally."

"The most important point is to try to obtain more success and European cooperation through research work and to speed up the use of results. The wide-scale additional use of bioenergy will have a considerable effect on controlling climate change, development opportunities within the forest industry, exploiting energy crops and increasing jobs," Sipilä emphasizes.

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