Abstract
There is a growing interest in utilization of unused materials for energy conversion to reduce CO2 emission and to improve regional economy. There are several options regarding unused material utilization systems, from thermal utilization in the forms of wood stoves or wood chip boilers to biomass power generation. While public administrations have supported these systems by means of subsidy and feed-in tariff with added retail prices, the amount of comparative assessments of individual systems from the environmental and economic perspectives is not yet sufficient. In this research, we interviewed organizations that constructed these systems to obtained basic data. Next we constructed six typical systems based on the obtained data and assessed the respective systems. The results revealed characteristics of the respective systems, such as the high performance of wood stove systems in terms of CO2 emission reduction per subsidy, and the high contribution of biomass power generation systems to regional employment.
