Green giant Russia to produce 1 billion tons of biomass for exports

Alexej Gordejev, Minister for Agriculture of the world’s largest country, announced at the EU’s Green Week in Berlin, that East-West agrarian cooperation and reform offers a tremendous opportunity for both partners in the field of green, carbon-neutral energy.

Gordejev says his country’s current bioenergy production potential for exports stands at a whopping 1 billion tons of biomass per year. According to the official journal of Russia’s agriculture ministry, 20 million hectares of land are immediately available for biomass production.

1 billion tons of biomass roughly equals 15 Exajoules of energy, or 2.46 billion barrels of oil equivalent, or the equivalent of 6.7 million barrels of oil per day. Russia currently produces some 9.15 million bpd of fossil oil.

According to the International Energy Agency’s Bioenergy Task 40, which studies international biomass trade, the former Soviet Union and the Baltic states combined have a long-term (2050) bioenergy production potential of between 45 (min.) and 199 (max.) Exajoules per year. This equates to roughly 20.2 (min.) and 89.3 (max.) million barrels of oil equivalent per day. The maximum represents approximately the total amount of petroleum the world currently consumes as a whole.

Biopact