•Global demand for biomass will double within 2 years alone (RISI & North American Bioenergy Studies)
•Biomass accounts for more than 75% of final energy consumption in sub-Saharan Africa
•Bamboo is the best source of biomass delivering a wide range of economic, social, environmental and financial returns
•Exclusive biomass investment seminar: Thursday 18th July 13.00 & 18.30, London 

One new renewable energy source which is meeting this demand is biomass, a biological material derived from plants primary which can either be used directly via combustion to produce heat or indirectly after converting to biofuel.

Indeed as population growth and economic development increase energy needs, the global demand for biomass, particularly for energy generation, is quite simply soaring.

In 2012 alone 4.36 million metric tons of biomass was shipped from the US to the EU according to the U.S. Industrial [biomass] Pellet Association and recent RISI and North American Bioenergy studies anticipate that global demand for biomass will double within 2 years alone, within 5 years reaching 37 million dry tonnes per year in Europe and 20 million dry tonnes in the USA. By 2020, the demand for biomass in Europe should reach 243 million dry tonnes with more than 77% of the overall demand coming from the energy sector.

Within the UK the positive role biomass can play has been recognised with Chancellor George Osborne committing £75 million to the conversion of the Drax coal-fired power station to biomass in his 2013 Budget.

Outside of the major Western markets, demand for biomass is also growing and changing in the nature of its supply. In sub-Saharan Africa, biomass accounts for more than 75% of final energy consumption with wood biomass the most common source of domestic fuel, but today it is increasingly being supplied from more sustainable sources such as green charcoal rather than through cutting of natural forests.

In South Africa alone, which is highly coal dependant, there is a rapid movement towards the use of biomass for heat and power. According to the Pew Clean Energy Report the country’s clean energy investment grew a mind-boggling 20,500% from 2011 with $5.5 billion invested in 2012, up from under $30 million the year before.

Ray Withers, Chief Executive of multi award-winning investment agency, Property Frontiers, comments,

“Biomass is attractive in a green energy mix because unlike intermittent renewable energy sources like wind or solar it provides stable baseload power. Global biomass power production is set to rise 9% per year but we must move away from our already challenged forests to finding other sustainable and efficient sources of biomass.”

High performing and fast growing sources of biomass have the edge in this rapidly evolving market place and as bamboo is the fastest growing plant on earth with some species obtaining growth surges of 100cm per day, bamboo is now in favour not only with hungry pandas but biomass producers.

Thriving in some of the poorest, most degraded soils on earth with growth patterns which ensure sustainability and its ability to sequester four times more carbon that other timber, bamboo is fast becoming the biomass source of choice with commercial demand for the harvest from plantations such as the Kowie Farm on the Eastern Cape of South Africa at an all-time high.

The Kowie Bamboo Farm at Port Alfred covers some 482 hectares, divided into lots available for qualifying high net worth and sophisticated investors to purchase as a 15 year commercial land lease through Property Frontiers.

Each full hectare plot, priced at £25,700 consists of 400 individual Bambusa balcooa plants, or clumps which have already been planted, and if managed correctly is projected to return, through the pre-agreed sale of raw biomass, £110,705 gross over the 15 year lease period.

So with bamboo offering not only a wide range of economic, social, environmental and financial returns, contact Property Frontiers today on +44 1865 202 700, visit www.propertyfrontiers.com to find out more or join the free exclusive biomass investment seminar on Thursday 18th July, 1300 & 18.30 at the Hilton Park Lane, London, click here for tickets: http://propertyfrontiersbiomass2.eventbrite.co.uk/