Biomass atlas of the Philippines

The United States Department of Energy (USDOE), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Philippines Department of Energy (PDOE) through the (PBEL) Biomass Energy Laboratory of the Philippines sponsored a project to facilitate the modernization of the bio-energy sector in the Philippines. To accelerate the widespread use of biomass energy in the country, a biomass energy resource atlas was developed. The PDOE has initiated a project in 1997 to establish the Biomass Energy Laboratory in the Philippines to consolidate all efforts in the biomass sector. Over the years, the PBEL has been consolidating resource data on biomass production in the country. An attempt was made to encode the data in a form convenient for project development and analysis. The USDOE through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) saw the need to upgrade the capabilities of the PBEL by providing technical and financial (through USAID). NREL supported a project to further convert the biomass resource data in to a Geographic Information System (GIS) format which in the future could be compatible with automated computer programs being developed by NREL.

The primary goal of the project was to develop detailed biomass energy resource maps for the country for all regions, provinces and in some cases by municipality and partly to produce a comprehensive biomass energy resource atlas as output of the GIS mapping results. In addition, an innovative approach to provide an accurate estimate of the biomass resource was made by identifying processing centers associated with the production of biomass wastes using differential global positioning system (DGPS). By identifying point sources of biomass resources through these processing centers, project development and feasibility assessments could be performed primarily because the transport distances were already accurately determined.

Organic Farming Information Network
Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD)
©2006