Woody biomass plays so far the largest part of renewable energy production in Hungary. The conference tackled its further potentials in Hungary and its positive impacts on private forestry. New EU regulation on rural development yet to be implemented causing serious financial problems for the forest owners.
The Hungarian CEPF member organised on September 26th its yearly private forestry conference. The main issues discussed were 1) the regulations in the new forest law, 2) incentive system changes in the budget year 2010, 3) energy on biomass basis as potential to fight the crisis.
The new forest law has been prepared by active consultaiton between the administration and the forest owner association (MEGOSZ). Regarding private forestry, the rationalisation of the administration requirements means less unnecessary task to carry out and standardised administration procedures.
It is true that the budget of the national incentives has been cut by 30% down to ca 5 million € but the main issue is that the one concerning the private forest management incentive remains unchanged in 2010. There are major difficulties to start the EU co-financed rural development regulation measures. According to the ministry most of them can however start as of 2010, with exception of the Natura 2000 payments. On the Natura 2000 payments there is no progress of the negotiations between the ENGOs and the forest management parties, which hinders the codification process and in consequence the measure’s future is unsure. Recently the Forest-environment measure was opened up with a total budget of ca. 96 millions of Euros for the whole programming period (2007-2013).
At the afternoon there was a demonstration of forestry mashines of chipping and transport. This gave a good example of how wood as energy source can contribute to master the crisis when the policy support is there. At the moment Hungary produces only some 5.7% of its total energy production by renewables and majority of it is woody biomass. Considering also the agro products, the potential to increase the share of them is very large.
Also private forestry has further wood mobilisation potentials, as some 25-30% of the private forests are under no management at the moment - mainly fragmented, small-scale estates. "Therefore is necessary to keep up the national incentive scheme also impacting on wood mobilisation from these areas and providing options for forestry service companies to be active there!" - said Mr József Luzsi, president of the PFOA of Hungary.
Some 300 colleagues from Hungary and abroad (Austria and Transylvania) attended the event. Published by Atilla Lengyel, Dr.