Environmental Impact Assessment of Heat Generation from Residues: a Forest-Based Industry Case Study

Biomass is considered an important source of energy, in particular wood and forestry waste are one of the major sources of biomass energy in some places for residential use. However, little information is given for industrial use. This paper evaluates the environmental life cycle of the combustion of forestry waste for the generation of heat that is used in a sawmill. The sawmill produces plywood and timber in the state of Durango, Mexico, and produces forestry waste that needs to be valorized into energy. Hence, its environmental impact assessment was compared when fuel oil is used for energy generation. The results of the life cycle assessment suggest that the heat generated by the combustion of biomass is environmentally more attractive, obtaining a negative mitigation of − 107.8% in the category of eutrophication potential, when is compared with fuel oil. Thus, considering the indexes of each of the categories, the potential environmental index (PEI) was 0.064 when forestry waste is used in contrast with 0.156 PEI/MJ for fuel oil. It is concluded that the waste obtained in the forestry industry can be used for heat generation and thus contributes to the energy required for the forestry industry, with less environmental impacts than fuel oil.