Reducing heat production costs The main markets for New Zealand’s forest industry are either dry or treated timber. In both cases heat energy is required. This heat demand comprises the larger part of the energy requirements of a sawmill.

Process heat can be produced through either fossil fuels or bioenergy. Burning wood waste to produce heat is a common way of saving costs on sawmilling sites. Almost half of the wood in a sawmilling process ends up as some form of wood waste or is used for some other process.

In a large number of New Zealand mills, this wood waste is burned to produce heat for drying kilns and timber treatment plants. This fuel is ‘free’

in the sense that it is collected on site, but there are still costs associated with handling the wood waste, storing the wood waste and capital investment. Mills that don’t use wood waste will be using some form of fossil fuel in their heating plants, and the rising costs of fossil fuels will be impacting on the cost of manufacturing dry and treated timber.

Questions

1 Why is the wood waste fuel not a ‘free’ resource?
2 How could the business estimate the cost saving in recycling wood waste as a fuel?