The role of indirect woody biomass sources in the Italian energy sector

This paper aims to describe and analyse available data on the main components stages of the wood energy value chain in Italy, highlighting discrepancies between data about woody biomass consumption and domestic supply. Discrepancies are probably connected to informal harvesting, historically a source if raw material not easily captured by official statistics, and to the lack of information regarding the energy utilization of sources not directly connected to forest operations, like, for example, residues from industrial processing, post-consumer recovered wood and biomass from urban forests. The paper focuses on the role played by these non-forest sources. In other European countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, available information gives evidence that these resources cover an important share of woody biomass sources used for energy production, while in Italy, until now, there are no reliable data on the global availability of non-forest wood resources or their utilization for energy purposes. This paper aims to understand the main factors that can influence the utilization of these sources in Italy, analysing the legislative framework and competition with other market sectors for the same raw material. At the Italian level, the competition with panel production seems to strongly limit the use of recovered material for energy purposes. As in other EU countries, data on wood processing residues are scarce and not well organized, even if the utilization of woody biomass for energy production appears to be a rather common practice.