Proceedings World Bioenergy 2010

there are no grain-drying installations that use waterbased
boilers in UA.
Straw bales in the majority of Ukrainian cases have
an average weight of 300 kg (Fig. 3) while in Swedish
and Danish systems these are standardised bales of
500 kg each. However, this is also linked to the boiler
scale in UA, which are smaller than those functioning on
Swedish and Danish farms for all ABF types. Straw
annual requirements are quite the same among countries,
and depend on the boiler capacity. Straw storage is
different for all cases, and there is no specific trend
observed depending on the size or type of the installation.
Both in UA and in WE, ash from straw combustion is
mainly returned to the soil.
In UA unlike WE no cooperative ownership of DH
networks is encountered. For analogous installations in
UA and WE investment costs are lower in UA while the
payback periods are relatively the same (about 2-3 years
for comparable systems below 1 MW).
In UA energy security issue and a desire to achieve
energy self-sufficiency in remote areas were observed to
be some of the key driving forces for the transition
towards straw. With increasing prices for natural gas
imported from Russia [14] the trend towards the
increased development of renewable energy alternatives
is obvious in UA. Energy security can be forecasted to
have a continuous influence and be a facilitating factor
for the development of renewables and bioenergy in
particular. However, it is not likely to bring groundbreaking
changes in the existing energy system until
market distortions in the form of cross-subsidised energy
tariffs are removed in Ukrainian system [14], and when
private users will be paying real price for conventional
energy carriers.
Figure 3: Field straw storage at agricultural enterprise
LLC “DiM”, Drozdy village, Kyiv province, Ukraine
Swedish and Danish examples of straw use for
energy revealed that medium and large scale straw-fired
installations often required political support in addition to
purely economic reasons for transformation with targeted
incentives in place [11,12]. This is the case for the large
scale CHP plants in DK, and may be one of the reasons
why in SE there are still no functioning large scale strawfired
installations. As for the medium scale installations
for neighbour and district heating, if privately owned
(which is quite a spread practice in DK), they require
significant private investments (in the range of EUR 0.5-
2.3 million) both for the boiler installation and the DH
network construction [67-70]. It can be assumed that
these investments would be 2-3 times lower in Ukrainian
104 world bioenergy 2010
reality, in case there were straw-fired boilers of domestic
manufacture. However, financial constraints can still be
quite significant taking into account the low purchasing
capacity of Ukrainian agricultural producers. In this case
feasible funding schemes will be required for the
expansion of straw use for energy on medium scale.
All straw-fired installations in UA are only
generating heat, which can be explained by their small
capacity. CHP plants on straw do not exist below
10 MW, which can be demonstrated with Danish
experiences [71]. With existing incentives on electricity
generation from renewable sources (“feed in tariff”
mechanism) electricity from straw could potentially
become a pathway for residual straw utilisation in UA.
However, this is not likely to occur until a more targeted
governmental support of the activity is put in place like it
happened in the case of DK [12].
From Ukrainian experiences it can be concluded that
private ownership of a straw-fired installation is one of
the important predetermining factors for the enterprise
success. This is also noted by Ukrainian bioenergy
experts 30. In UA in ABF 1 and 3, where the majority of
successful cases on straw for energy can be found,
private business interests of actors or agricultural
companies played the key role for the transition. In the
initiatives within ABF 2, where a straw-fired boiler is
owned by local municipality, a wide range of problems
were encountered. The problems were mainly linked to
the commitment of actors, their interests and a desire to
participate in a collective action. For example, the main
difference between the project case in Vyshyuvate and
the functioning case in Zlatoustivka was the fact that in
Zlatoustivka a straw-fired boiler was owned by the
agricultural enterprise and the DH provision was ensured
by entrepreneurs among their business activities [61]. In
the case of Vyshnyuvate the boiler was planned to be
financed from the state budget and owned by local
municipality, which did not show any commitment but
rather opposed the idea. The opposition was mainly
linked to the lobby interests of the decision-makers [55],
who were interested to keep the functioning coal supply
system in place.
Described types of problems are likely to be
encountered where local authorities and municipalities
play a key role as decision-makers. However, in case the
energy installations and distribution grids are privatised,
the owners become the definitive stakeholders.
Successful examples from WE [11,12] show that strawto-energy
facilities are very rarely owned by
municipalities. Hence the privatisation can become one
of the pathways for a more smooth transition towards
increased straw use for energy in UA.
In Ukrainian conditions similar to Western European
context all successful examples of transformation
towards straw/bioenergy include a number of economic,
environmental and social co-benefits leveraged between
the actors in one way or another.
5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
5.1 Conclusions
Three types of ABFs are identified in Ukrainian
context:
• On organisational level – ABF 1: Small scale
local straw production for local use for heat;
• On intraindustrial level – ABF 2: Small scale