The Austrian Energy Agency (AEA), partner with AEBIOM in the H2020 Bioenergy4Business project, has developed an innovative, free-of-charge Bioheat Profitability Assessment Tool for the examination and comparison of investments in biomass-heating and equivalent fossil fuelled systems, for mid-scale production of low temperature space and domestic hot water as well as process heat. The novelty of this tool is that it includes country-specific 2015-based investment data for all heating plant components of wood-pellets, wood-chips, natural gas and fuel oil fuelled in-house and district heating plants for a capacity range of 100 kW to 20.000 kW for 12 European countries. For countries where of relevance, data of straw and coal fired plants are available as well. All data sheets of the tool and its integrated manual can be switched between 10 languages. For more information on how to the tool works and how to access it, please download this PDF.

Due to a rising demand in wood fuel, the knowledge of the energy content of customary wood fuel assortments has been gaining in importance in wood fuel trade. In order to facilitate the conversion from prices per volume or weight unit commonly used in forestry and the timber industry to energy prices relevant in the context of energy production, the Austrian Energy Agency has compiled an easy-to-use calculation tool. With only a few required variables the program can quickly calculate the most important parameters for a variety of wood fuel assortments.