Bioenergy sector in Scotland

Scotland is an ideal location for the bioenergy sector providing both abundant bioenergy sources and a world class academic sector committed to bioenergy research and development.

Bioenergy broadly covers four areas of energy sources:

• Biocrops from plants grown to make biofuels or directly exploited for their energy content
• Marine biomass from sources such as algae, too costly at present to replace other commercially available fuels
• Energy from waste
• Wood fuel

Bioenergy solutions can produce energy from specially grown energy crops or from farm, forestry or processing residues and gas from landfill sites.

Bioenergy in Scotland – an overview

Scotland offers the bioenergy industry abundandant raw materials and cutting edge technology to efficiently convert these sources into energy.

The Scottish Government is committed to developing renewable energy sources and Scottish legislation is driving the demand for bio-energy.

Scotland’s vast bioenergy potential includes:

• 60 percent of the UK’s forestry resource is found in Scotland
• Scotland’s timber production is expected to double in the next 15 years as mature forests are harvested
• Large areas of rural agricultural land are available for growing energy crops
• Legislation requires that over fiver percent of all road fuels come from biofuels
• Bioenergy is valued as a way of protecting large energy users from the volatility of the global energy price market
• generating the equivalent of 100 per cent of Scotland's own electricity demand from renewable resources by 2020
• Legislation to reduce Scotland’s landfill is stimulating interest in using biomass waste for energy production

Scotland’s bioenergy strengths