Poland_forests

Polish forests could meet Polish energy needs for less than 10 months

If Poland were to burn all its forests, it would produce enough energy to meet Poland's demand for not even 10 months. Calculations by Piotr Podsiadły.

2 tons of green wood produces 1 MW/hour [source]

80 tons of green wood is produced per acre [source]

The average Polish citizen uses 80 kWh every day (including heating, transportation and electricity) [source]

38 million * 80 kWh = 3,040 GWh daily, giving 1,109,600 GWh annually.

Annual electricity generation in 2018 was 170,039 GWh [source] so that cross checks with the value above.

To support this annual energy consumption Poland would need to burn 2*1,109,600*1000 = 2,219,200,000 tons of green wood, which would require cutting 2,219,200,000/80 = 27,740,000 acres of forest.

There are 9,2 million hectares of forest in Poland [source].

1 ha = 2.47105 acre.

27,740,000/2.47105/1,000,000 = 11.2 million hectares of forest to meet the current annual energy demands.

9.2/11.2*12 months = 9.9 months

If we burn all forests in Poland, we would produce enough energy to meet Poland’s demand for only about 10 months.

Polish old forests would need at least 60 - 80 years to regrow. We don't have enough land to sustain such energy production.

Piotr Podsiadly