The Potential for Sustainable Biomass in the Romanian Energy Sector - Value chain analysis for potential black pellets investments - Activity 13

The main objective of this activity is to conduct a value chain analysis for assessing the potential of using black pellets instead of coal for energy production in Romania. The landscape of biomass production in Romania has grown increasingly competitive due to the rising demand and the proliferation of pellet producers seeking raw materials. Additionally, this shift stems from the decline in wood processing and exploitation activities over recent years, primarily due to reduced access to forest resources, legislative instability, and bureaucratic hurdles. Romania officially harvests 19 million cubic meters of wood annually, exploiting only 50% of its sustainable potential exploitation rate which is the growth rate of forests. Operating costs for the value chain of power production from black pellets and coal are estimated, which was 100.68 million RON/year for black pellets value chain. This is more than 5 times higher than that of using coal, estimated to 18.18 million RON/year. The difference is mainly due to the extraction phase since biomass harvesting is more costly than coal mining activity. The black pellets value chain includes their production from biomass, namely pretreatment and steam explosion which require electricity to be feasible. It is important to note that there is a significant difference in ash contents of these two fuels which would make a difference in total costs due to ash disposal costs. However, local data from Romania was not available as per today and thus not included in the calculations.