
Market readiness and availability are important factors for the growth and development of a business in general and biomass-based businesses in particular. And globally according to Hawkin Wright, predicting wood pellet sales will reach the highest among other biomass fuels, which is more than 27 million tons/year in 2025. While FutureMetric also predicts that the market for wood pellets for industry (industrial pellet fuel) can reach 55 million tons in 2030. Thus the need for wood pellets will continue to increase by an average of more than 5.5 million tons per year since 2025, so too for wood pellet production. In addition, PKS (palm kernel shell) are also an alternative biomass fuel besides wood pellets and PKS is the main competitor of wood pellets in the global biomass fuel market. But compared to wood pellets, global PKS trade is relatively small, estimated at only 5 million tons/year. Indonesia is the largest producer of PKS in the world because it is comparable to the area of palm oil plantations and as a producer of palm oil / CPO or the owner of the largest oil palm plantation in the world.

Meanwhile, biochar, specifically for Europe alone, is estimated to have 51 new biochar factories or a total of 220 units, with biochar production estimated to be 115,000 tons per year. And global biochar production in 2023 is estimated to reach 350 thousand tons or equivalent to 600,000 carbon credits and is expected to continue to increase. And in 2025, the biochar industry is predicted to grow more than 5 times compared to 2023. The existence of carbon credits is one of the biggest motivations for biochar production. With the existence of carbon credits, there is a significant surge in biochar production from before. As an illustration, in 2023, this biochar carbon credit will make the largest contribution, namely 90% of carbon removal in the voluntary carbon market according to data from CDR.fyi.

The main market or user of wood pellets (industrial pellet grade) are power plants that carry out cofiring with renewable fuels, namely biomass-based, especially wood pellets. The greater the cofiring ratio, the greater the need for wood pellets. With a capacity or size of hundreds or even thousands of MW of power plants, the need for wood pellets is also high even with a low cofiring ratio. The trend of coal-fired power plants to carry out cofiring is getting bigger and also the increase in their cofiring ratio, even a number of coal-fired power plants can switch to 100% using wood pellets (fulfiring). In addition, a number of biomass power plants, both 100% with wood pellets or PKS, have also been built and started operating. There is a global target that the portion of coal-fired power plants must decrease to 4% (from the current condition of around 30%) by 2030 and 0% by 2040 if the world wants to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and prevent the occurrence of severe damage from the climate crisis. This is also what makes a number of coal companies in Indonesia develop renewable energy, especially wood pellets from energy plantations.

While biochar, although its
market potential is also very large, the problem is that awareness is
still low, so education and socialization still need to be improved.
Like the market for biomass fuel in the form of wood pellets and PKS /
palm kernel shells which are generally large companies (because they are
also the largest CO2 emitters), to accelerate the biochar industry, a
large capacity market or user is needed. Large farms and plantations as
well as energy plantation forests or energy plantations are potential
markets / large users of biochar. Likewise, post-mining reclamation
lands that will be revegetated are also potential users / large markets
for biochar. This is also related to the fact that a significant volume
is needed to be able to produce adequate CO2 absorption volume (carbon
sequestration / carbon sink). Meanwhile, from the agricultural or
plantation side or application to the soil related to the use of
biochar, so far, when considering the effects of biochar, the focus has
only been on increasing crop yields. However, the added value that
biochar can offer in its application in soil, at least in optimal
agricultural systems, includes not only increasing crop yields, but also
counteracting the loss of humus in the soil, preventing nitrate
leaching, and increasing water storage capacity to increase crop
resistance to drought and resilience to the climate crisis.

And basically both biomass fuel production such as wood pellets and carbon sink materials such as biochar will have a positive impact on the climate, even both can support each other such as if biochar is used for energy plantations and then wood products from the energy plantation are used for wood pellet production, more details read here. The use of renewable energy will reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere because it does not increase the concentration of CO2 or is carbon neutral, while biochar will reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere because it absorbs CO2 in the atmosphere in biomass which is then concentrated by pyrolysis to become biochar, or carbon negative. Even making a carbon sink, but not reducing the source of its emissions is a futile or irrelevant effort, more details read here. So bioeconomy with carbon neutral economy, namely biomass fuels such as wood pellets or PKS or carbon sink economy, namely with biochar, will be closely related to business readiness such as market / user aspects, raw materials for certain production capacities, raw materials and so on. These characteristics need to be considered carefully and comprehensively so as to produce optimal and sustainable profits.