Bioenergy Committee establishment was approved at the Distributed Power Generation Association's General Meeting held in Moscow on April 19. Felix Borisov has become its Chairman, being also the Distributed Power Generation Association's Vice-President, Executive Partner of the PHYSICS of HEAT Group of Companies. The main aim of the new Committee is combination of common efforts for the formation and development of the thermal power generation sub-sector based on biomass and joint implementation of innovative energy projects in the Russian and foreign markets.

Nowadays, a new sub-sector in biomass-based thermal power generation (pellets/wood chips) is actively being formed in Russia. Implementation of the advanced combustion technologies of this renewable resource opens up great opportunities for development of not only remote and isolated Russia's lands, but also is able to significantly reduce the costs of small and medium-sized enterprises for heating in almost any region of the country.

"Due to the complete lack of market coherence, we face an important task - to establish interdepartmental and intersectoral cooperation for effective interaction between government and business. Biomass Committee shall unify industry competencies, become a platform for the qualitative integration of existing and new technologies, an industry growth driver", noted Maksim Zagornov, President of the Distributed Power Generation Association.

The new committee will allow members of the Distributed Power Generation Association to contribute to the development of state programs and regulatory framework for the development of bioenergy in the Russian Federation, as well as to participate in the development of measures to support domestic producers of pellets.

It should be noted that until 2022, Russian pellet producers occupied from 5 to 7% of the world market, annually producing more than 3 million tons of environmentally friendly fuel. At the same time, most of the resource was exported, and only half a million tons of pellets were used in the domestic market.

"Such disbalance between export and home consumption as caused by the extremely low development of the domestic market of pellet generation technologies. The Russian pellet heating industry – due to weak support from the state - is still in its infancy. However, after the embargo on Russian fuel imposed by Western countries in 2022, the Russian Government finally looked towards pellet generation. And today the task our committee is facing is to consolidate common efforts to strengthen active development of biomass heating power generation subsector", stated Vice-President, Chairman of the Bioenergy Committee of the Distributed Power Generation Association, Executive Partner of the PHYSICS of HEAT Group of Companies Felix Borisov.

The key tasks of the Distributed Power Generation Association Bioenergy Committee will be:

• Consolidation of manufacturers of boiler equipment, engineering systems and integrators of technical solutions (engineering companies) to create a unified position on the pellet generation market development and representation of interests in executive and legislative authorities;
• Development of market regulation mechanisms, including when implementing the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation to the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation (transfer of municipal boiler houses to biofuels) and the Ministry of Industry and Trade (support for manufacturers of boiler equipment);
• Spreading of biomass combustion technologies in municipal and household energy, development of tools for social attractiveness and trust in pellet generation, improvement of the environmental situation in the country.

Also at the meeting, it was decided to include the PHYSICS of HEAT Group of companies in the Distributed Power Generation Association - the country's largest profile engineering company for the development and integration of technical solutions based on pellet and chip boiler plants, warranty and service maintenance of biomass boilers. Over the 10-year history, the PHYSICS OF HEAT Group of companies has implemented over 200 projects of biomass boilers with a single capacity from 20 kW to 5 MW. The group's customer portfolio includes not only the largest Russian companies (Russian Railways, Tatneft, Magnit), but also hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses. PHYSICS OF HEAT Group of companies’ website - www.p-heat.ru.