How much cheaper was biomass heating than natural gas heating in 2022?

The energy required by an industry for its production processes, or by a residential community or hotel to heat its residents in 2022, was 4.6 times more expensive if obtained from gas than if using wood chips. Meanwhile, domestic pellet consumers saved 44% compared to gas consumers . This data, compiled by the Spanish Biomass Association for the second half of 2022 in Spain Eur and IDAE .

When in the summer of 2022 we saw how the energy crisis literally ran us over, the solid biofuel manufacturing sector - pellets, wood chips, bone… - set itself two objectives : to ensure the supply of the national market and to maintain price competitiveness against fossil fuels.

Thus, domestic manufacturers and distributors controlled the volume of their exports to Central Europe eur where selling prices, despite the higher cost of transport and the resulting emissions, were much higher, and distribution centers were bringing forward purchases to try to avoid collapse and an excessive rise in prices in their markets.

The dizzying increase in the costs of electricity - in August 2022, one of the months with the highest production in pellet factories in Spain, the cost of electricity multiplied by five compared to the previous year - and of wood at origin, caused by a much higher demand than supply, caused the unusual rise in pellet prices , which producers tried as much as possible not to pass on in its entirety to consumers.

Now that things are starting to calm down, we see that both objectives were met : there has been enough pellets and wood chips for consumers and prices, despite being much higher than the previous year, have continued to maintain a significant difference with those of conventional fossil fuels (electricity, gas and heating oil), confirming that biomass has been, in 2022, the most economical source of energy for heating.

The Eur Statistical Office Eur , has published the average prices, including taxes and fees, that consumers in Spain and other countries actually paid in 2022, and there we see again that biomass is the energy source that generates the most savings for heating and industrial heat users , sectors that consume nearly 40% of the total energy in our country.

Comparing
the prices that domestic consumers have paid for energy, including taxes, fees, caps, etc., we see that electricity has had an average price of 33.50 eur per kWh, gas 18.55 cents, heating oil 11.34 cents, and pellets 10.38 cents per kWh. In short: heating with gas is 44% more expensive than heating with pellets, and heating with electric radiators, for example, costs three times as much as heating with pellets.

Focusing on large consumers such as a neighborhood community, a hotel or an industry, for example, the average price of industrial gas in the second half of 2022 reached 13.68 eurcents per kWh, double that of 2021 and triple that of 2020, compared to the unbeatable price of wood chips, whose average was 2.95 eurcents per kWh during the second half of last year.