The previous section shows that most fuelwood are consumed in households. But non-household consumption of fuelwood could also be significant. The available national energy balance tables indicate that 10-20% of fuelwood consumed went to non-household activities in Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. Studies show that non-households fuelwood consumption is also significant in Bangladesh and Maldives. Most of the non-household fuelwood consumption are in agro-based rural industries such as crop drying, tea processing, and tobacco curing. But fuelwood consumption is also significant in non-agro based industries, in particular the brick and ceramic industries. For example, Koopmans and Joseph (1993) report that annual fuelwood consumption in the brick industry in Asia ranges from 75,000 tons in Pakistan to 2 million tons in Bangladesh, equivalent to 2.3 and 94.9%, respectively, of the fuel consumption in of the brick industry in these two countries. To some extent fuelwood is also used in commercial application like in food stalls, bakeries, and restaurants. Fuelwood also finds applications in public institutions like the monasteries and the armed forces in Bhutan.

Table 3.13: Household Energy Consumption by Income Level, Thailand (1986)
(in PJ)

Bangladesh. Zaki (1994) shows that in 1991-92, out of the 7.2 million tons fuelwood consumed, two million tons went to the industrial sector and another 157 thousand tons, to the commercial sector. All in all, non-household sectors represented 31% of the total fuelwood consumption. Ramani et al. (1993), however, present a lower estimate of 21% (as the proportion of fuelwood going to non-households). It was also shown that 64.5% of total non-household fuelwood consumption (or 11.39 petajoules) in 1991 went to brickmaking alone. In addition, fuelwood was also used in tea processing, tobacco curing, baking, pottery, and soap making. Another 10% go to small food shops. (See Table 3.14.)

Fuelwood, however, contributed less than 20% of biomass consumption in non-households. Higher contribution came from agricultural residues at around 65% of total biomass consumption in agro- and non-agro based industries including paddy parboiling and processing, sugar milling, tobacco curing, pottery, and lime making.

Bhutan. FAO (1991) estimates that more than 920,000 tons of fuelwood are consumed in Bhutan every year. Of this, the household sector accounts for 88%. Agriculture and forestry activities account for 7.4%. Overall, non-household activities consume close to 106,000 tons of wood (in the form of firewood and waste woods) every year (Table 3.19). More than one-third of this volume are converted to charcoal and another 25% are used for cardamom drying. It was also estimated that the Bhutan armed forces use fuelwood significantly, amounting to around 10% of the fuelwood consumption every year. In addition, large quantities of fuelwood is also used monasteries, road construction, cremations, and boarding houses.

Table 3.14: Estimated Consumption of Biomass Fuels in Industry,
1981 and 1990, Bangladesh (in PJ)

Sri Lanka. CEB (1992) estimates that 8.6 million tons of fuelwood were consumed by the household sector in 1992. Agro- and small manufacturing industries, on the other hand, combined for 1.4 million tons in the same year. Fuelwood and other biomass fuels are used in coconut, rubber, tea, and tobacco processing as well as in bakeries, bricks and tiles manufacture, distilleries.

In energy unit, fuelwood consumption in Sri Lanka reached 164.9 PJ in 1992. The household sector accounted for 83%, while the industry and commercial sectors, for 14% and 3%, respectively.

Thailand. Biomass fuels accounted for 27% of total fuel consumption in the industry sector (DEDP, 1994). It consumed 163.9 PJ of biomass fuels in 1994 (this was almost equal to the total fuelwood consumption in Sri Lanka in 1992) that was about half of that consumed by the household and commercial sector in the same period, which amounted to 317.8 PJ. The share of fuelwood in industrial energy consumption was not even half that of bagasse which accounted for 19%.

Vietnam. In Vietnam, biomass fuels was used in crops processing, food processing, preparation of animal feeds, and in mineral-based industries (see Table 3.15).

Table 3.15: Non-household Biomass Energy Consumption, Vietnam
(in tons)

Household energy consumption surveys and most wood energy studies oftentimes just provide a "snapshot" of national or local fuelwood situations. Because of the time and money involved in conducting these surveys and studies, they are seldom conducted regularly, and thus a consistent basis for assessing wood energy consumption over a certain period is difficult to find. Nevertheless, some studies do produce information about the evolution of wood energy consumption. Moreover, available national energy balance tables could provide some historical data on wood energy consumption at the national level.

Ramani et al. (1993) also compares biomass fuel consumption in agro- and non-agro based industries during the same 10-year period. Total biomass fuel consumption also decreased from 93 PJ to 90 PJ, with practically no change in the relative fuelwood (18%), bagasse (16%), and agriculture residues (66%) consumption (see also Table 3.14).

Table 3.16: Energy Consumption by End-use in Rural Areas, Bangladesh

China. Household energy consumption in rural China increased from 7,680.3 PJ in 1980 to 8,254.3 PJ in 1985 (Table 3.17). During this period, fuelwood consumption went down both in relative and absolute terms, from 3,041.9 PJ (equivalent to 39.6% of total household energy) to 2,849.2 PJ (34.5%). On the other hand, the absolute consumption of crop residues (agricultural by products) was up from 3,431.6 PJ to 3,616.0 PJ, but its relative contribution to the household energy mix dipped to 44% from 45%. This decrease in contributions from biomass fuels was offset by the higher contribution from coal.

Table 3.17: Rural Household Energy Consumption, China

During this period, the share of biomass fuels in the household energy mix declined from 97% to 94%. There were, however, changes in the relative shares of the different biomass fuels. The share of fuelwood increased to 47%% from 42%, while those of animal dung and crop wastes both went down by the same proportion (see Figure 3.3). It is also interesting to note that there were also mixed movements in the type of fuelwood, classified as logs and twigs, consumed. Despite the increase in total fuelwood share, that of twigs actually dropped to 26% from 31%, while logs share was almost doubled to 21% from 11%. In addition, the consumption of firewood logs increased as much as five times that of firewood twigs. This is coupled by similar trends in the number of households using and collecting biomass fuels. For example, the proportion of households using logs increased from 35% to 56%, while that using twigs declined from 68% to 63%. Similarly, the proportion of rural households collecting logs increased to 84% from 64%, while that collecting twigs slightly decline to 94% from 96%. This indicates that collecting twigs had become more difficult over time that people resorted to cutting or felling logs, thus increasing its consumption both in relative and absolute terms.

Another study shows that firewood consumption in urban areas declined from 16.5 million tonnes in 1978-79 to about 9.5 million tonnes in 1985 because urban households shifted to using LPG (NCAER, 1985 in Natarajan, 1995).

Myanmar. Household energy consumption in Myanmar increased from 236 PJ in 1985 to 272 PJ in 1992 (UNDP, 1993). During this period, the share of fuelwood increased slightly to 90% from 88%.

Nepal. Household biomass consumption in Nepal increased from 203.4 PJ in 1984/85 to 252 PJ in 1993/94 (WECS, 1994). During this 10-year period, fuelwood share decreased from 77% to 74%. This decline was compensated by the increase in the share of agriculture residues from 13% to 17%. The share of animal dung dipped slightly from 10% to 9%.

Non-household biomass fuel consumption grew faster from 2.04 to 4.83 PJ in the same period. In 1987/88, industries began using agriculture residues such that its share was up to 7% in 1993/94. Fuelwood accounted for the remaining biomass fuel consumption.

Sri Lanka. Based on the available energy balance tables of Sri Lanka (CEB, various years) fuelwood consumption in this country had actually declined from 189.2 PJ in 1989 to 164.9 PJ in 1992, or by 13% over this three-year period. Both the fuelwood consumption of the household and industry sectors decreased, but the share of households was down slightly from 84% to 83%, while the latter’s remained at around 14%. The balance is accounted for by the commercial sectors which tripled its fuelwood consumption from 1.53 to 4.62 PJ.

Thailand. Fuelwood had been the dominant household fuels up to the late 1980’s, when it was overtaken by the commercial fuels and later by charcoal. Fuelwood consumption in the residential and commercial sector grew from 107.9 PJ in 1985 to 131 PJ in 1994. Charcoal consumption, on the other hand, more than doubled from 82.8 to 186.8 PJ. Thus, by 1994 charcoal was the dominant fuel, accounting for 38%, even slightly higher than the 35% share of commercial fuels.

During this period also, fuelwood consumption of industry dropped from 50.5 to 32.5 PJ. There was a decline in paddy husk consumption, from 24.6 to 18.8 PJ. But the consumption of bagasse more than doubled from 51.1 to 111.7 PJ.

Vietnam. Fuelwood consumption in Vietnam increased from 87.7 PJ in 1985 to 100.4 PJ in 1990 (Hung, 1993).

Table 3.18 summarizes the evolution of fuelwood consumption for the above-mentioned countries. Though data is wanting, it broadly indicates that fuelwood consumption in households was generally increasing over time.

Table 3.18: Evolution of Fuelwood Consumption in Selected Asian Countries
(in PJ)