Estimating the Availability of Unused Materials for Woody Biomass Power Generation Using the Forest GIS

Abstract

These researchers acquired the forest GIS for private and public forests from prefectures and national forests from the Forestry Agency of Japan. We then calculated incomes and expenditures such as silvicultural and harvesting as well as stumpage prices on the Japanese cedar, cypress, pine, and larch forests using the silvicultural prescription set based on the regional forest plans and operation system set based on topographic conditions such as slope angles and height differences with GIS. Finally, this study estimated the availability of unused materials for woody biomass power generation plants under operation with FIT at the end of June 2020 as the supply potential from the profitable subcompartments. As a result, supply potentials of used and unused materials were estimated at 65,490,336 m3/year and 13,098,067 m3/year, respectively whereas those availabilities were estimated at 31,080,672 m3/year and 6,216,134 m3/year respectively. Therefore, the rate of the availabilities to the supply potentials was 47.5％. Furthermore, the rate of the availabilities to the demands was 71.6％. Considering the subsidy rate of 100％ to secure the reforestations the availabilities met the demands in Japan as a whole.