Biomass is a resource of domestic origin, obtained from local forests and agricultural and livestock farms, so it would not be necessary to import it from third countries. According to the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC), the use of this biomass could produce energy that is equivalent to that generated annually by ten million tonnes of crude oil.

“Biomass has the virtue of being closely linked to the rural environment and is an driver for wealth, employment, and population growth in rural areas. The pellet plants for stoves and boilers, for example, are not in the big cities, but in rural areas such as Bea (Teruel), Erla (Zaragoza), Huerta del rey (Burgos), Baeza (Jaén), Tarazona de la Mancha (Albacete),.... and so on for the 67 existing pellet plants in Spain”, explains Daniel García, head of Projects and Innovation at AVEBIOM.

Continuing along the path of biomass energy recovery will not only help to revive the economy of rural areas, but will also improve the management of organic waste generated by agriculture, such as prunings from olive groves and vineyards, whose controlled burning in the field generates greenhouse gas emissions and affects air quality in rural areas. “In the agricultural sector, the use of biomass provides an outlet for by-products that would otherwise be disposed of without being used,” said García.

The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) defines biomass as the biodegradable fraction of products, residues and waste of biological origin from agricultural activities, including substances of plant and animal origin, from forestry and related industries, including fishing and aquaculture, as well as the biodegradable fraction of waste, including industrial and municipal waste of biological origin.

One of the crops with the greatest room for improvement in the use of biomass is the olive sector, which has 2.75 million hectares of olive groves in 15 autonomous communities. “Olive prunings generate biomass that is very appealing for generating energy, but the reality is that there is still no well-established sector capable of managing and treating the more than two million tonnes generated each year in Andalusia alone,” says Pedro Segovia, Biomass Business Development Manager at Repsol.

"To promote agroforestry biomass recovery, we would need to expand the market to new sectors and strengthen the business fabric. In addition, there is a lack of skilled labor and a need for the administration to become more involved. Public-private collaboration is essential to mobilize, for example, all the biomass from fire prevention, which has a high logistical cost that can only be covered by the private sector,” he concludes.