Consumption of wood fuels in households in Serbia: Present state and possible contribution to the climate change mitigation

Abstract

The paper presents results of the research in wood fuels consumption for house-hold needs in Serbia. Research was performed during the period from October 2010 until April 2011, i. e. in the period of heating season in order to get the actual situation regarding the presence of certain fuel types in the consumption of households with special highlight on types and amounts of wood fuels. For this purpose, an adequate methodological concept was defined with the aim to primarily get relevant and reliable data on wood fuels consumption and afterwards, by using FAO WISDOM methodology and adequate GIS software packages to perform their analysis, mapping, and graphic representation. One of the most significant elements of the adopted methodological concept was field research-questionnaire of households which was conducted on the sample of 36.946 households out of which 20.725 urban and 16.221 rural in 22 municipalities in Serbia, which was 1.46% of the total number of households in Serbia. Results of the survey showed that 23.2% of the total number of households in Serbia used district heating system (based on conventional fossil fuels as dominant), 25.3% used electricity, and 10.6% used gas for heating purposes. Most households (40.9%) used solid fuels such as fuelwood, coal, briquettes, pellets, agricultural residues and combinations of solid and other fuels.