The Global Biomass Market Outlook 2017 - Databook

The report gathers data on biomass and waste power generation across the top ten countries leading the market for biomass. The report covers the key players, key feedstock available, and the prominent biomass power technology installed in each of the 10 countries – the US, Germany, Brazil, the UK, Sweden, Finland, Italy, China, India, and Australia.

This report examines the emerging factors driving the growth of the biomass power market, as the use of biomass for electricity generation slowly becomes widespread globally, led by government support. This study found approximately 1.4bn people globally lack access to electricity. From the point of view of electricity supply, the pressures of a rapidly increasing population, rising concern of global warming, and the need to achieve national energy security is driving an unprecedented interest in exploring renewable power resources including wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, marine power as well as biomass for achieving a low carbon electricity mix by both the governments and electricity utilities.
The report highlights how parts of North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific are using biomass feedstock, in a bid to increase the total electricity supply. Similar to any renewable resource, the demand for biomass for electricity generation is driven by government legislation and regulations, encouraging the growth of biomass feedstock for electricity generation. Further, the report examines how biomass feedstock suppliers and utilities in the biomass market are learning to combat rising transportation costs associated with gathering feedstocks and transporting the feedstock to the electricity generation sites, through development of cost effective biomass power technologies.

Globally the term bioenergy is used to describe biomass, biogas, and biofuels. Bioenergy is used to generate electricity, produce heat, and power vehicles. This report focuses on the emerging trends in the biomass market for electricity generation only. The term biomass can refer to any material derived from recently living organisms, which includes plants, animals and their byproducts. Based on the findings, the report considers renewable energy to include all renewable energy sources other than traditional biomass. The term traditional biomass refers to the level of biomass consumption in the residential sector in developing countries and refers to the use of wood, charcoal, agricultural residues, and animal dung for cooking and heating.

Key Market Issues
Electricity demand:- The demand for electricity globally is expected to grow, driven by growing population and the presence of large untapped markets, which remain to be connected to the power grid. The challenge facing the global electricity market is managing the issue of carbon emissions with growing nations needing power and providing electricity access across rural and urban areas.

The cost of power:- As biomass feedstock lacks durability, issues including storage and transportation add cost to the biomass power generation, making biomass power generation expensive.

Threat to future biomass feedstock availability:- The availability of biomass feedstock in the future will face supply disruptions due to increase in deforestation along the Amazon River area, with dense tropical forests. For example Brazil, although they are the leader in using biomass feedstock for electricity generation, a recent government report indicates the Amazon River area, with tropical forests has been experiencing deforestation. Directly, the continuous need for land to support growing population and cultivate crops for food and biofuels will make Brazil’s government address the issue of deforestation with stricter regulations in the future.

Key findings of this report
Given the consistently growing electricity demand, global installed electricity generation capacity has increased at a CAGR of 4.0% between 2011 and 2015.

China managed to add 199GW of renewable power capacity, more than any other country globally in 2015, to reach 785GW of total renewable.

The biomass and waste power generation in the US recorded a CAGR of 3.2% between 2011 and 2015.

In 2014, the EU generated 11.9% of its electricity using co–generation

Globally the biomass power market could record investments of $639bn by 2035, driven by growing electricity demand.