Historical Background

The Kyoto rule has been signed by 156 countries (with the exception of the United States and Australia) since 1998 and is now currently followed by many countries.

The signing countries (including France) agreed to reduce the amount of polluting gases including CO2. As a consequence the governments encourages the development of ''clean energies'' which does not increase the amount of CO2 already existing.

For instance, the fossil energies reject a lot of CO2 and the amount of the worldwide reserve is declining each year. It seems clear then to find other solution and develop other energies.
Wood energy is one of the solutions.

Wood Energie

A clean energy.
A sustainable energy.
A energy how create employment.

The most successful wood energy is the rough-hew one, which is mostly used in the countryside, and in the cities, it complete an electrical or gas heating system.

There is currently a lot of different kinds of wood energies: crushed wood, pellet, sawdust, bark and all wood residuals.

All the residuals can be burned in automatic heating systems and is used in various European countries (Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland...) for collective heating systems.

A clean energy

During his growth, the wood absorbs a quantity of CO2, which is then turned back during its combustion. That means that the quantity of CO2 does not increase, because wood only turns back the quantity it needed for its growth. When the heating system is correctly installed, we can consider wood as a clean energy.

A sustainable energy

Wood is not a fossil energy; it is a renewable energy which can used all the wood residuals already existing. We do not need to cut trees to make pellets.

As it is a natural energy, wood energy is quickly renewed due to the forest natural growth. In Europe and especially in France, the forest growth is carefully developed. Since 1850 in France the total surface of forest has been doubled and is still growing nowadays. Each year, the annual wood collect (93 millions m3 in 2004) is much lower than the forest natural growth.

Wood is consequently an abundant, available and renewable energy, with a huge potential in term of development.

An energy that creates employment

Wood need more work than the other energies. Indeed, a heating system that heats 1,000 houses using 5,000 tons of wood can create (or maintain) 4 sustainable full time local jobs such as :

- Collect and treat all wood residuals
- Caring of the forest
- Crushing
- Transport and stock
- Management of the heating Systems