Power Producers Scour Forests as Burning Wood Gets Big
- Success of incentives means biomass demand hard to meet
- Wood pellet imports more than doubled to record in 2015
Showa Shell biomass power plant in Kawasaki City.
Photographer: Akio Kon/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
With almost 70 percent of its land covered by forests, Japan is leading a drive to return to wood as a source of cleaner energy.
While projects in the U.K. and the U.S. are experimenting with biomass, Japan is giving favorable tariffs to power producers who burn leftover wood as a way to cut the country’s dependence on imported fossil fuels.