Wood pellets are a clean, CO2-neutral and convenient fuel, mostly produced from sawdust and wood shavings, compressed under high pressure using no glue or other additives. They are cylindrical in shape and usually 6-10 mm in diameter and 10-30 mm in length. As a highly standardized and high-density fuel, pellets allow cost-efficient transportation and automatic operation of plants for heat and electricity production, from private homes to large-scale power plants.
With a rapidly growing share of the market, they are a key technology for increasing biomass utilisation in Europe and beyond, especially in the heating sector. Pellets are also an excellent way of using local resources thus making a concrete contribution to environmental and climate change protection.
In the last years, pellet production facilities have boomed all over the world, especially in Europe and in Northern America
The production capacity in all EU 27 is estimated at about 9 million tons (2007), globally it might be as much as a 12-14 million tons capacity.
Leading EU pellet producing countries are Sweden (1.7 million tons), Germany (900,000 tons) and Austria (800,000 tons). Sweden and Austria both have been leading pellet countries since the beginning of the pellet market development in Europe in the mid-nineties. Increasing production capacities can also be found, for example, in France, Spain, Latvia, Estonia and Poland. Russia has significantly increased its production capacities, from 50,000 tons in 2005 to 550,000 tons in 2007, nearly all of it for export. Canada’s plants produced about 1,335,000 tons in 2008.
In terms of pellet consumption, Sweden, Germany and Austria are in the lead in Europe, closely followed by France were a rapid market development took place in recent years. Italy has become one of the most important pellet consumers due to the increasing number of installed pellet stoves (about 800,000 stoves)
The pellet consumption in Europe presently amounts to about 6 million tons per year.
