Too much heat from biomass boilers

[lindnemi]

Share of biomass boilers should decrease, not increase.

[lindnemi]

I am reluctant to ban biomass boilers - which might be the simplest solution - because:

Holz und Pellets gelten im GEG 2024 als klimaneutrale Option, die das 65%-EE-Ziel (Anteil von mindestens 65 Prozent erneuerbarer Energie) erfüllen.
https://www.haufe.de/immobilien/wirtschaft-politik/wird-das-heizen-mit-holz-verboten_84342_561214.html

If they turn out to be a cost competitive solution they might well get built.

The capital_cost for biomass boilers from DEA seems low, but reasonable for Germany. I don't know if they already contain costs for filtering technology that may be required by EU legislation on particle emissions.

[lindnemi]

The pellets price in germany was around 50€/MWh in 2020 and is now at ~60€.

With the cost of solid biomass at ~ 14 € and of pelletizing at 9 € we end up at around half that value. Maybe increasing these costs would already be enough to force out the biomass boilers?

https://www.oekofen.com/de-de/aktueller-pelletspreis/

[lindnemi]

Cost of "transported" biomass (at the generator) is ~40€/MWh in the model. Adding 9€ for Pelletizing we end up at an estimate that is consistent with market prices.

However, the model has the option to use the local biomass from the store, pay the pelletizing add on, and ends up with costs of 14+ 9 ~ 23€ / MWh. This neglects the transport to / from the pelletizing plant.

The following table is from the paper cited for the pelletizing costs https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032119307142

The current 9€ are basically the costs of the large plant, divided by energy content of 4.8 MWh/t and rounded. However, this neglects all the transport costs, which are roughly the same order of magnitude. So according to the source the pelletizing + transport costs are more like 18€/MWh (on average).

So ideally there would be two routes to biomass boilers:

1. Transported biomass from the generator + pelletizing cost ~ 14 + 26 +9
2. Local biomass from the stores + pelletizing cost + pellet transport cost ~ 14 + 9 + 9

This would get closer to market prices, but be somewhat inconsistent, because the local biomass can be used directly in industry without transport, whereas in 2) we assume that pellets have to be transported from source to the factory as well as from the factory to the household. To treat both routes the same, maybe option 2) should be

2b) Local biomass + pelletizing + transport after pelletizing ~ 14 + 9 + 5

[lindnemi]

Actually, thinking about it again, adding both transport to/from the pelletizing factory might be fine, since in the paper they expect only small pelletizing plants to be able to source the feedstock locally. On the other hand i vaguely remember that we assume industry to be able to source the biomass locally.

The only question that remains then, is if we want to distinguish pelletizing costs between biomass that is already transported (via generator or biomass transport links) and local biomass (via stores)

[lindnemi]

Finally found some reference data in the Projektionsbericht 2023:
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/11850/publikationen/39_2023_cc_projektionsbericht_12_23.pdf

We are a little above that, but the higher pellet costs + sustainable BtL as another biomass sink might get us there

[lindnemi]

Actually, for Energie + Gebäude UBA has 900 PJ in CurrentPolicies, which is very close to what we get in Gebäude (everything ends up there because energie has almost nothing)

[lindnemi]

another relevant report:
https://www.klimareporter.de/images/dokumente/2024/02/entwurf-nabis.pdf

Nationale Biomassestrategie

[lindnemi]

For reference:
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/klima-energie/erneuerbare-energien/erneuerbare-energien-in-zahlen#ueberblick-beitrag-erneuerbare

[lindnemi]

It's fine if our model wants to use biomass to ResCom. However we have to make sure that the total biomass potential is not exaggerated. Here is a non-comprehensive list of things we have to get right:

• Report Primary Energy|Biomass|Solids (everything that gets used in ResCom and Industry)
• Consider modeling energy losses from pelletizing the raw biomass potentials (for drying, milling, ...)
• Make sure final energy is not greater than primary energy from biomass
• Harmonize total Biomass potential with other Ariadne models

[lindnemi]

More relevant literature:
https://www.dena.de/fileadmin/dena/Publikationen/PDFs/2023/ANALYSE_Marktmonitoring_Bioenergie_2023.pdf

[lindnemi]

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/84886642.pdf