Technical Note SB07: Cost of producing and delivering wood fuel

This Technical Note provides a simple methodology for estimating the cost of producing wood fuel. It is an estimation taking into account the sourcing, collecting, and processing of forest residue into a specification compliant chip or hog fuel plus the cost of delivery to a heat plant facility for conversion into energy. Any royalties on the biomass to resource owners is not included and neither is the profit for undertaking the activity of sourcing raw biomass and delivering it to a customer as fuel. Design and operation costs of the heat plant are also not covered. It must be stressed that the costs developed for this model are indicative only and additional, detailed, site-specific calculations will be required to estimate a fuel’s likely price to customers.

Note that this Technical Note is for hogged or chipped forest harvest residues and does not cover the production of wood pellets or other forms of wood fuel.