<Anchor> In
order to grow forests healthy, about 15 million trees are cut every year in Korea. These logs are likely to be used to build wooden houses or to make furniture, but in reality they are often shredded and made into renewable fuels.
Reporter Seo Dong-gyun covered it.
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beautiful tree is cut off from the mountain.
The old trees are cut down to create a healthy forest.
Each year, 5 million cubic meters or 15 million trees are cut down.
The solid wood you see now can be used to make furniture or plywood, and it can also be used as a solid fuel like this kind of twig.
However, recently, more and more, solid wood is made from recycled solid fuel.
The main raw material for renewable fuel is forest by-products, such as tree branches, and logs are used here.
Increasingly, the quantity is increasing, so in 2019, 340,000 tons of domestic wood were made from renewable fuels, and most were used as firewood for thermal power plants.
[Lee Seung-jae / Deputy Director of the Forest Energy Research Institute, Dankook University: While carbon is fixed (when wood is used as wood), when it is used as energy, it is immediately
released as
carbon dioxide.] The
reason why domestic wood is not used as wood is because of price competitiveness. is.
Comparing the prices of conifers, it costs about 20,000 won per cubic meter more than imported wood.
This leads us directly to a renewable fuel plant that uses trees nearby.
[Wood seller: Logistics costs are high. It doesn't fit at all in terms of economics. This is why we have no choice but to go to a pallet factory (solid fuel).]
To solve this problem, it is important to increase the self-sufficiency rate in the domestic timber market, which is around 15%.
The Forest Service announced that it will increase forest roads to reduce transportation costs and expand the domestic wood priority supply system.
(Video coverage: Lee Seung-hwan, video editing: Jeon Min-gyu)