The Ministry of the Environment, through the Public Company of Environmental Management, Egmasa, executes a pioneering pilot project in the province of Jaén to know the potential of extraction of biomass from the mountains.
This initiative has had as its first point of study the mountains owned by the Junta de Andalucía in the region of El Condado, and has an investment of 1.5 million euros. The objective is to know the possibilities that forests have when it comes to generating resources in a sustainable way, to encourage the creation of biomass use companies that can benefit the population in terms of employment and, in addition, reverse the possible good results in the improvement of the green masses of Jiennenses.
The provincial delegate of Environment, José Castro, has visited this Friday with the mayor of Chiclana de Segura, Santiago Rodríguez, the works of extraction of wood that, in an experimental way, are carried out in around fifty hectares of the public mountain Los Engarbos.
There, the delegate explained that the experts of the Ministry and the public company have established different work areas --always in areas of pine forest-- according to the tree density, the type of wood that is analyzed and the orography of the land, to apply different techniques of removal of wood or biomass.
At some points a new system of cutting and dragging complete specimens has been tested and then treated following different techniques; in others it has proceeded to the treatment up to the chipping, and in all of them it is evaluated what type of formula is the most correct and what possibilities always from the sustainable point of view offer the forests of this region.
The delegate pointed out that "the hectares selected in this mountain collect, on a small scale, a representation of the mountains of this region in such a way that, in the first studies, we obtain densities of between 35 and 45 tons of biomass per hectare that can be extrapolated to other points of the region and that would allow us to meet the productive demands and use by companies interested in this source of energy in the future. "
In addition to the work within this project that is executed, employment is being generated in the area, with the dedication of about twenty people to this work. Similarly, local and Andalusian companies are benefiting from the wood extractions that are being carried out with this study.
Castro stressed that the province has more than 600,000 hectares of forest land so this type of projects "are essential to know the potential of the biomass resource, at least, in those areas of public ownership that can be a benefit for the population and for companies in the sector with their sustainable exploitation, in accordance with the budgets that the Ministry of the Environment is marked within the Andalusian Forest Plan itself and in line with the community directives with which it is intended to increase the use of renewable energies, especially the potential of biomass, of much greater depth in points such as Despeñaperros or Cazorla, Segura and Las Villas, to the detriment of fossil fuels," he said.
The National Action Plan for Renewable Energies of Spain (Paner), with a horizon 2011/2020 and which includes the requirements of the EU, establishes that the share of energy from renewable sources of the countries must reach in that period 20 percent of the final consumption of gross energy. (EUROPA PRESS)
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