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

The energy needed by an industry for its production processes or by a neighborhood community or a hotel to heat its residents in 2022 was 4.6 times more expensive if it was obtained with gas than if wood chips were used. Domestic pellet consumers , for their part, saved 44% compared to gas consumers . These are data from Eurostats and IDAE prepared by the Spanish Biomass Association for the second half of 2022 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 Central Europe , where sales prices, despite the higher cost of transportation and the consequent emissions, were much higher and distribution centers were bringing forward purchases to try to avoid the collapse and an 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 European Statistics Office, Eurostats , has published the average prices, including taxes and fees, that consumers in Spain and the rest of the countries have actually paid in 2022 and there we once again verify that biomass is the energy source that most Savings are generated for heating and industrial heat users , sectors that consume close to 40% of the total energy in our country.

Comparing
If we look at 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 euro cents per kWh, gas 18 .55 cents, diesel 11.34 cents and pellets 10.38 cents per kWh. In summary: 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 attention 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 euro cents per kWh, double that of 2021 and triple that in 2020, compared to the unbeatable price of wood chips, whose average was 2.95 euro cents per kWh during the second half of last year.