As you can see from our conference diary, Earthscan attends many conferences and exhibitions every year on a big range of subjects. We thought it might be interesting to bring you short reports and updates from some of these events to let you know what we get up to and a bit about the subjects themselves.

I'm writing this on our stand at the World Sustainable Energy Days conference in Wels, Austria. [Background info: my name is Mike Fell, and I commission books for our energy and environmental technology lists -- I'm here to sell books from the stand, but also to talk to delegates about their information needs and any book plans they might have.] The conference has various themes including energy efficiency and low-energy cooling, but at the moment the focus is on pellets. While possibly not as glamorous as photovoltaics or wind power (although I'm sure many here would disagree), pellets are a renewable fuel with a number of distinct advantages.



They are made by compressing waste biomass -- mainly wood-derived (e.g. sawdust from saw mills) -- into hard, cylindrical pellets a couple of centimetres or so in length. These are then burnt in a boiler much like oil (2kg pellets have the same calorific value as a litre of oil), releasing heat for use in space/water heating. Also like oil, the pellets' small size means they act as a fluid and can easily be blown from place to place (such as from delivery tanker to storage tank). Unlike oil, however, pellet fuel is carbon neutral as the carbon dioxide released when it is burnt was originally sequestred from the atmosphere by the plant material as it grew (during the last 1-50 years, depending on the plant).

Around 85% of energy use in an average home can be attributed to water/space heating, so using a pellet boiler can result in significantly reduced carbon emissions for households. Additionally, pellets can be stored easily and used when required -- eliminating variability issues that affect wind and solar. It's not surprising our stand is busy...

Anyway, keep an eye on the new Earthscan Expert series for more on pellets shortly; in the meantime have a browse through some of our bioenergy titles. If I get the chance I'll try to send in another update from Wels, hopefully with some photos of snow (if I can get my phone camera to email them).