The first wood-fuel system to be installed by the Forestry Commission in Scotland has been switched on by Scottish forestry minister Lewis Macdonald.
The state-of-the-art automatic boiler that burns wood chips has been installed at Forestry Commission Scotland offices in Huntly, Aberdeenshire.
It is part of the Scottish Executive‘s drive to increase the proportion of Scotland’s energy that is supplied from sustainable resources and reduce consumption of finite resources and harmful emissions while providing a boost to the local ecnomy.
Mr Macdonald said that as well as boosting the use of wood fuel the system would provide an extra market for the output from Scotland’s forests.
The boiler uses chips made from wood harvested from local forests. It is fed automatically from a hopper that is refilled every few weeks, and generates about 30kW of heat output.
