Ecological and economic estimation of the efficiency of energy wood use in the regional agglomeration «Drohobychyna»

Agglomeration is a territorial association of various settlements, connected by economic, labour, social and other aspects. One of the most important areas for establishing close cooperation within the agglomeration is to increase energy efficiency. The feature of the regional agglomeration of «Drohobychyna» is it’s belonging to the Carpathian economic region, which is characterized by the highest forest cover in Ukraine, where the local population traditionally uses wood for energy purposes for heating premises and cooking. Accordingly, there is a sufficient amount of wood biomass resources that can and should be used for energy purposes. The Carpathian region has a significant potential of wood biomass available for energy use by attracting forest wood, wood from landscaping, wood residues from the processing, wood waste. Additional sources of wood fuel can be parks, forest protection strips, energy plantations, afforestation along motorways and railroads, as well as dry land. The resource potential of energy wood in the territory of the regional agglom-eration of «Drohobychyna» forms the resources of specialized enterprises, where the main suppliers of wood biomass are the State Enterprise «Drohobych forestry», Drohobych State Forestry Enterprise «Galsillis» and potentially the «Green World» Municipal Enterprise in Boryslav. In 2017, the wood increment at the enterprises under consideration was: in the state enterprise «Drohobych forestry» 113.4 ths. m3; Drohobych SFE «Galsillis» 32,2 m3; Municipal Enterprise «Green World» 0.9 thou-sand m3. Reserve for increasing of the efficiency of wood utilization are cuttings, the volume of which at State Enterprise «Drohobych forestry» in 2017 amounted to 7,1 thousand m3, and at Drohobych SFE «Galsillis» for the first half of 2018 - 0,5 thou-sand m3. Waste of forestry operations can become an additional resource of wood biomass for use in energy purposes. Another way of producing wood biomass is to grow energy plantations on infertile lands. To determine the level of readiness of the local population to use wood for the needs of households, as well as factors influencing the energy wood use, a sociologi-cal survey of part of the population of Boryslav was conducted, in which 81 respond-ents participated. The study found that most residents use an individual heating system using gas or combined boilers. It was found that 40% of respondents would like to change the heating system. Under favourable conditions such as constant availability of resources, cheap loans for replacing the heating system, subsidies for solid fuels and the active promotion of wood biomass as a source of energy, part of citizens ex-pressed their willingness to switch to heating their housing energy wood. This paper was developed in the framework of Swiss-Ukrainian research pro-ject “Identifying of Green Energy options in the Ukrainian Carpathians” under leading of Institute of forest, snow and landscape (WSL), Switzerland, funded by the Swiss Secretariat for Research, Education and Innovation (SBFI) in the framework of the Ukrainian-Swiss Cooperation in Forest Research consists of targeting the usage of wood energy in the Ukrainian Carpathians.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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