[2020 National Audit] Lee Sung-man "95% of Wood Pellets Used in Power Plants Are Imported"

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwangho Lee] It has been revealed that 95% of wood pellets used in domestic power generation projects are imported, highlighting the urgent need to expand the use of domestic biomass such as unused forests.

According to the 'Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) Registered Facility Biomass Fuel Usage Details' received by Lee Seongman, a member of the National Assembly's Industry, Trade, Energy, Small and Medium Enterprises Committee from the Democratic Party, from the Korea Energy Agency on the 15th, out of the 3,042,894 tons of wood pellets used last year, 2,878,384 tons (94.6%) were imported, while only 164,510 tons were domestically produced.

The RPS is a system that obligates power producers with facilities of 500,000 kW or more to supply a certain percentage of electricity from renewable energy sources, which include biomass, solar power, and wind power. Power producers with RPS-registered facilities must either produce renewable energy themselves or purchase Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) certificates from other renewable energy producers.

To meet RPS requirements, power producers have mainly engaged in co-firing power generation, burning biomass fuel mixed with coal.

According to the Korea Energy Agency's 'REC Issuance by Energy Source,' the number of biomass RECs issued in 2019 was 9.47 million, accounting for 29.6% of the total 31.97 million renewable energy RECs issued.

Accordingly, biomass imports have continued to increase. Wood pellet imports rose from 1.34 million tons in 2015 to 1.51 million tons in 2016, 2.13 million tons in 2017, 2.86 million tons in 2018, and 2.88 million tons in 2019.

Domestic wood pellet usage has increased from 50,000 tons in 2017 to 90,000 tons in 2018 and 160,000 tons in 2019, but remains absolutely insufficient compared to imports.

Even when including the use of wood chips?cut to a certain size from forest by-products?in addition to sawdust-compressed wood pellets, domestic usage was only 170,000 tons in 2017, 220,000 tons in 2018, and 290,000 tons in 2019, accounting for just 9.1% of the total woody biomass (wood pellets and wood chips) consumption.

Assemblyman Lee pointed out, "The use of imported wood pellets accelerates indiscriminate overseas forest destruction and creates a vicious cycle that discourages domestic biomass utilization incentives, hindering the development of related industries."

He added, "While promoting the utilization of unused domestic forest resources, organic biomass should also be encouraged from the perspective of resource circulation to reduce the use of imported biomass."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.