IEE Project proposal: FOsteRing Efficient long term Supply parTnerships (FOREST)

This project pretends to promote the establishment, consolidation or expansion of efficient and reliable markets for solid biomass, including the promotion of long-term agreements between farmers, foresters, landowners, biomass processors, bioenergy suppliers and end-users.

Traditional commodity markets are not well structured to allow such stable long term supply chains to become established as constraints such as seasonality, locality and quality require a greater level of structure in the market.  In emerging markets lack of supply security is compounded by poorly developed boiler supply and support supply chains – thus keeping fuel demand low. To break this negative cycle and promote a positive cycle for a sustainable market we need to increase reliability in both fuel and boiler supply chains. The project aims to address both of these market failures by:

• Increasing fuel supply chain structure through efficient and sustainable long-term supply contracts and supply networks, both regionally and inter-regionally;
• Developing more reliable boiler supply chains and customer support partnerships.