Economic efficiency of the energetic use of stalks

There is a significant potential of straw (8 to 13 million tons) as well as in lower amounts of hay and landscaping materials in Germany, which can be utilized for renewable energy production. In practice heating plants based an stalk biomass strongly differ in their economic efficiency. Previous studies often showed lower economic efficiency of stalk biomass based heating plants compared to fossil fuel based heating plants. The reasons for this need to be identified and its origins need to be investigated. The project ''Economic feasibility of heating plants based an stalk biomass'' is carried out to investigate the economic efficiency of the use of stalk biomass for renewable energy of different approaches along the entire value chain in the practice. For this purpose, surveys are carried out of operators of straw heating plants in Germany. The aim of the study is to figure out planning targets for economical viable approaches for the use of stalk biomass in the energy supply. First results of this study indicate, that the economic efficiency of straw based heating plants is mainly influenced by the level of utilization and by local characteristics such as existing infrastructures, availability of biomass fuels of the region and the customer structure of the heat energy.