ABSTRACT

Biomass has gone from being more or less the only energy resource used for heating and cooking on a normally quite inefficient way to be a very valuable energy and material resource used for all kind of applications. As a consequence of this, it has become very important to develop the most efficient energy

system for all kind of societies. Some countries like Brazil have high production capacity of sugar cane for ethanol and trees for pulp and paper while others as China are driving from burning straw in the fields to starting to use the straw as an energy resource. The system solutions include conversion technologies going towards biorefineries, newmarkets

for biomass like vehicle fuels and to new business models where many different markets compete for the biomass. With biomass, we have many more actors than for oil industry with a relatively small number of very big companies. The biomass resources also differ a lot from regions to regions depending on the needs as well as the climatic conditions. In northern countries, the heating demand is very high, while in southern countries this demand is negligible. To promote the development of biomass resources good policy incentives are needed. The oil

industry has in reality been subsidized inmanyways bymany governments during the last century, by not having to pay for the negative effects of air pollution leading to acidification, emissions of neglect able substances, effect of oil spillage from ships and oil production, effect on global warming etc. Instead, the governments have handled these types of problems using tax money. In many countries like Iran and Nigeria, the gas-price has been strongly subsidized and thereby the consumption has become very high. The good is that the population gets a share of the oil exports, but the negative effect is the vast overuse of energy that is in no way sustainable. Here the aim to be fair has become a problem. It can be compared to Norway where the price of gas for private people is among the highest in the world and the income from oil export instead is invested by governmental companies all over the world to get benefits for the country long term, but not for individuals short term. This shows very different possible strategies and that there are good and bad effects of all strategies, but long term the Norwegian is probably much better than in countries strongly subsidizing the private use. We also can see that in both Iran and Nigeria the subsidies have been decreased with riots in Nigeria as a consequence 2011-2012. In Iran the price has increased more than five times 2005-2012, and the goal now is to get a price in the same range as in many other countries, with the aim to get the oil and gas resources to last longer. This also will favor use of other resources like biomass, sun and wind in reality.