Abstract
Biomass accounting form is a tool supporting decision-making regarding economic and environmental estimation of biomass utilization systems. Suggested in our previous works, biomass accounting form records data on biomass utilization amount, initial and running costs, etc. in the form of accounting sheet. In this study, evaluation of biomass-related activities conducted in Maniwa biomass town was performed by means of this tool. 17 activities including woody biomass direct burning, pellet production, and biomass education and promotion activities were targeted. The required information was gathered by hearing; after that accounting sheets for each activity as well as an integrated accounting sheet were created. Analysis of the results showed that though several activities had low cost-benefit performance, the economic and environmental efficiency of the whole system was comparatively high. This can be explained by the large scale of the most activities under study. However, it became clear that social impact, such as employment opportunity increase or budget spent for salaries was low due to the fact that most of the biomass-related projects targeted here were conducted as a part of already existing economic activities, such as lumber manufacturing, etc.
