A sustainable model learned from an Austrian village to promote the spread of thermal energy in mountain villages
Updated by Yasunao Kobayashi on August 29, 2025, 9:36 AM JST
Yasuhisa KOBAYASHI
Alpha Forum, Inc.
President of Alpha Forum, Inc. and Steering Committee Member of the Platinum Forest Industry Initiative. Ltd. in 2001, taking advantage of the company's venture support program. In September 2023, he received the Wood Use System Research Association Award.
Have you ever felt uncomfortable with the use of fossil fuels as a matter of course? Nowadays, a large percentage of electric power and heat energy is fueled by coal and oil. When we look around the region, we see that it is full of forest resources that once played a major role as fuel. Although forest resources are troublesome to handle, technological advances have made it possible to obtain boiler equipment with high combustion efficiency and to save labor in operation and management. For local communities, "more energy options" ≒ "local communities become richer" is the same as "more energy options. The good thing about fossil fuels is that the cost of purchasing them flows out of the region in proportion to the amount consumed, while forest resources allow money to circulate within the region. We can take the initiative to propose a proposal that will enrich the region for the benefit of the region. Directly, energy costs are expected to go down, and the number of people flowing through the area can be expected to increase through inspection tours after the introduction of the system.
The woody biomass heat supply service is a service in which a heat supply company performs all the necessary services on behalf of the customer, including procurement and purchase of equipment and buildings, procurement and purchase of woody fuel, and maintenance and inspection of equipment, in order to use the heat produced by woody fuel. Customers only pay for the amount of heat used, just as they do for electricity.
Electric energy is taken for granted and can be used in every home - every business. This is the result of the efforts of electric power companies since the Meiji Era. In the same way, we would like to promote the use of heat sources that are used or distributed as a matter of course in the community at an overwhelmingly rapid pace using current technology.
I had to rewrite my passport, so I checked the number of times I had been to Austria by the number of stamps. In the last 10 years, I have been there 24 times. All of them have been to Austria to meet and talk with forestry and forestry machinery manufacturers (especially overhead line lumber machines), foresters, wood-related training centers, wood biomass boiler manufacturers, heat suppliers, wooden buildings and their designers (design and structure), and so on.
The population is concentrated in Vienna, Graz, Salzburg, and Linz, as the western side of the country from Innsbruck is a rugged alpine mountainous region. The forestry industry is flourishing in the Steiermark region, centering on Graz. It is safe to assume that there are as many settlements as there are churches. There is no atmosphere of "marginalized villages" as in Japan. The satoyama are being tended to. The following are pictures of satoyama in Steiermark, Austria. The land is being "cut down, planted, grazed...and used continuously.
In Austria, more than 1,500 "heat supply businesses" continue to exist. The heat supply companies in Austria are "profitable" and heat consumers "get heat cheaper than kerosene or fuel oil". The answer is that they are able to obtain heat at a lower price than kerosene or fuel oil. We are convinced that the result of effectively utilizing the land of forests has led to the spread of the heat supply business as a matter of course.
More than 10 years ago, I guided the president of a woody biomass boiler manufacturer in Austria and four others from Maniwa, Okayama Prefecture to Nagano Prefecture. From the car window of the car, people would say, "The satoyama is so untidy...it hasn't been touched..." The people living in Tokyo would say, "The greenery is abundant. People living in Tokyo would think, "It's so beautiful with abundant greenery..." but the people of Austria would say, "What is this... it's so ugly...! The vines are indeed abundant, and the landscape is a mess. Indeed, there were many areas infested with vines and weeds, and many people did not want to go into the forests. The forests, which had not been touched for decades, had fallen into further disrepair as the vitality of the mountain villages and communities declined.
Free thermal energy management requires several conditions to be in place. Forestry must be restored as a matter of course, woody biomass boilers must operate stably (with personnel in charge and technology to back them up), several kilometers of heat pipes must be managed by the local government as local infrastructure, just like roads, and the heat supply business must rent this infrastructure. If the heat supply business has surface rights to several thousand hectares of forest, there is a high possibility that the business will be viable in terms of building materials, energy fuels, etc. In exchange for the surface rights to the forest, the heat supply business will be able to use the forest for its own purposes. In exchange for the forest surface rights, the villagers (forest owners) get free heat energy. Young people who will be joining the village can get free heat energy if they get a sustainable job related to this system. We would like to consider the revival of mountain village communities by creating such an area.
Austria's own farmers and foresters benefit from the same benefits as free heat energy. In many cases, fuel chip providers are also investors in the heat supply business, and they receive a chip sales fee in return for a dividend based on their investment ratio and the quality and quantity of chips delivered, so they pay a fee for the heat demand included in the district heat supply system, but in some cases the fee is effectively free after deductions. It is a reasonable mechanism.
From the next issue, I would like to start writing about the key points of "Morimori Biomass Co. (President, Alpha Forum, Inc., Steering Committee Member, Platinum Forest Industry Initiative)
