ASEAN BIOMASS WASTE GENERATIONS

In ASEAN, energy from biomass represented about 12.41% of total renewable energy consumption in 2011. However, energy production from biomass still has a significant potential since a large portion of the biomass is still underutilized. Moreover, increasing potential of energy crops and the development of plant yield improvement technology will extend the bioenergy potential even more. Therefore, biomass is considered as a promising alternative energy source in future strategic energy planning both national and regional context.

ASEAN is fast becoming an attractive market for developing biomass as an energy source. There is the enormous potential of biomass energy in ASEAN countries given that it produces nearly 230 million tons of feedstock supply per year from diverse forms of wastes such as agricultural residues, agro-industrial wastes, woody biomass, animal wastes, municipal solid waste, etc. Southeast Asia is also a big producer of wood and agricultural products which, when processed in industries, it produces large amounts of biomass residues.

According to conservative estimates, the amount of biomass residues generated from sugar, rice, and palm oil mills is more than 230 million tons per year which correspond to cogeneration potential of 16–19 GW. Woody biomass is a good energy resource due to the presence of a large number of forests and wood processing industries in the region.

As a case example, it is estimated that Indonesia only produces 146.7 million tons of biomass per year. This biomass is equivalent to about 470 GJ per year of energy production. However, biomass availability is distributed all over the country, but large concentrated scale can be found in the Island of Kalimantan, Sumatera, Irian Jaya, and Sulawesi. The power generation estimated from about 150 million tonnes of biomass residues produced per year to be about 50 GW or equivalent to roughly 470 GJ per year.

The main source of biomass energy in Indonesia is rice residues with a technical energy potential of 150 GJ per year. Other potential biomass sources are as follows:

a. Rubberwood residues (120 GJ per year),
b. Sugar mill residues (78 GJ per year),
c. Palm oil residues (67 GJ per year),
d. 20 GJ per year in total from plywood and veneer residues, logging residues, sawn timber residues, coconut residues

Another source of biomass waste is a municipal solid waste (MSW). A major percentage of these wastes originated from a household in the form of organic wastes from the kitchen. Currently, all the wastes are either burned or dumped into a designated dumping ground or landfill, without any recovery for renewable energy.