The Ministry of Climate and Environment is working on regulations limiting wood burning in the energy sector – reports “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna”. The new solutions are controversial, especially among the furniture industry, which believes that the regulations are not restrictive enough.
As reported by Tuesday's “DGP”, the Ministry of Climate and Environment has prepared a draft regulation that is to precisely define what so-called energy wood. So far, in Polish regulations it has been formulated very generally, as “wooden raw material, which due to qualitative and dimensional features has reduced technical and utility value”. The lack of precision caused the provisions to be interpreted arbitrarily. The Act on renewable energy sources obliged the Minister of the Environment to clarify the definition.
“The primary function of the draft regulation is to eliminate the combustion of wood in professional energy production, which can be used industrially in a different, more economically advantageous way” – it is stated in the justification for the draft regulation.
Less wood for energy
As reported by “DGP”, this is to serve the rationalization and optimization of wood management, as well as to respond to “the social expectation that wood that can be used in a more economically advantageous way should not be burned in professional power plants”. An additional goal is reducing pressure on deforestation from the side of professional energy. The new regulations will be beneficial, among others, for the furniture industry.
“The regulation is the fulfillment of one of our promises to the wood industry. We estimate that thanks to it up to 1.5 million cubic meters of wood could be brought to the marketwhich would otherwise be burned in the energy sector,” Mikołaj Dorożała, Deputy Minister of Climate and Environment, assured journalists.
Industry representatives told DGP that the regulation is too unnecessarily restrictive. They do not like, among other things, the fact that wood shavings and sawdust, which should be used to produce wood-based panels, will be considered energy wood. The social side is also disappointed, because it considers the ministry's proposal to be unambitious. It would like to see greater restrictions on wood burning.
As emphasised in the text, the draft regulations do not introduce the ban promised in the coalition agreement, but only a restriction related to the lower profitability of incineration not classified as “green energy” production.
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