Potential Contribution of Firewood, Energy Forestation and Forest Residues in Turkey

Abstract

In this paper, the firewood, energy forest and forest residue potentials of Turkey are investigated. Turkey has no large oil or gas reserves and more than half of the consumed energy is imported from abroad. Hence, in order to provide a sustainable economic development, new long-term energy strategies, which will reduce the share of fossil fuels and increase the share of renewable energy sources in the primary energy consumption, have to be developed. Presently, Turkey has 21.2 million hectares (ha) of forested land (27.2% of the territory) and the annual production of firewood is about 6–7 million m3. In addition, approximately 7 million m3 forest residues are formed during cutting and maintenance operations each year. Despite these high potentials, these resources can not be utilized efficiently. Most of the firewood produced is used illegally by local people for household needs. Only 15% of the available energy forests are utilized by classical methods which result in very low product yields and there are no modern plants to convert the firewood and forest residues into heat and electric energies. If, however, modern plants can be established to generate electric and heat energies from the produced firewood and formed forest residues, at least 2 Mtep (million tons of equivalent petroleum) of the energy consumption of the country can be met.