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

The energy that an industry needed for its production processes or a community of neighbors or a hotel to heat its residents in 2022 was 4.6 times more expensive if it was obtained with gas that if wooden splinter was used. Pellet domestic consumers , meanwhile, saved 44% against gas consumers . They are Eur Ostats and IDAE data prepared by the Spanish Biomass Association for the second 2022 semester in Spain .

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

Thus, national manufacturers and distributors controlled the volume of their exports to Centro eur OPA , where sales prices, despite the highest cost of transport and consequent emissions, were much higher and the distribution centers were advancing purchases to try to avoid collapse and excessive rise in prices in their markets.

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

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

The Eur office of Statistics, Eur Ostats , has published the average prices, including taxes and fees, which consumers have really paid in Spain and in the rest of the countries in 2022 and there we verify that biomass is the source of energy that generates the most savings generate to users of heating and industrial heat , sectors that consume about 40% of the total energy in our country.

Comparing
if we look at the prices that domestic consumers have paid for energy, including taxes, rates, stops, etc., we see that electricity has had an average price of 33.50 cents of eur or per kWh, the gas of 18.55 cents, the 11,34 cents and the pellet 10.38 cents per kWh. In summary: heating with gas is 44% more expensive than doing it with pellets, and doing it with electric radiators, for example, costs the triple to heat up with pellets.

Focusing the attention on large consumers such as a community of neighbors, a hotel or an industry, for example, the average industrial gas price in the second semester of 2022 reached 13.68 cents of euror per kWh, twice as much as in 2021 and the triple that in 2020, compared to the unbeatable price of the wooden splinter, whose average was 2.95 cents of euror the KWh during the second semester of last year.