Biomass development and potential in South East Europe

This article discusses the advances in technology, the market conditions and the biomass solid fuel availability in the South East Europe. The energy mix in South East Europe (SEE) is known to be a highly polluting one with important CO2 and particulates emissions. Following the introduction for several of the countries in the European Union and the signature by most of them of the Kyoto protocol, severe caps have been imposed on the CO2 emissions. Most of the SEE countries have a significant expertise in thermal combustions units based on lignite and coal. Therefore, the use of the solid biomass fuel for electricity generation has started being applied progressively as a means of electricity generation. Pure biomass plants and biomass co-firing plants are actually studied and developed in many of these countries. We refer to as solid biomass all agricultural residues, wood flakes or pellets, olive pomace and any plants that can be used as solid biofuels. Each country among the ones in SEE have different biomass type availabilities which can be transported inside the country or exported to close distances. In this article we will discuss the technologies that have already been applied in South East Europe for different types of biomass. We will stretch the point of biomass solid fuels availability, the regions that can supply important quantities and which neighboring countries can be considered in case of a shortage. The latter availability will be closely linked to the technology that is used each time and the influence of the biomass mix to the technology used. Finally, in order to describe the financial feasibility of these projects we will refer in some financing and feed-in-tariff schemes that are actually applicable.