Since Portugal became a member of the then European Common Market-ECE, back in January 1986, much of the traditional agricultural activity in the mountainous territory of the inland of northern and central Portugal was abandoned, because it became uneconomic. This land was mostly transformed into forest and shrublands, representing more than 65% of the Portuguese territory. This change in land use resulted in bigger amounts of wood and biomass by products and residues spread over large parts of the territory that, together with hotter summers, increased the risk of dangerous wildfires that became a major socio–economic issue in the country as a whole. In this paper, we analyze the evolution of the disposal of biomass forest residues and the production of the “electricity from biomass” in Portugal, the technical aspects related to the biomass based power stations already in operation, and also the important logistical operations involved and their wider socio-economic impacts. The results obtained in this analysis point out to several steps to be taken in the future to promote the efficiency of this system, as a powerful tool to obtain a more environmentally sustainable and economically profitable forest in Portugal.

Proceedings of the 27th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 27-30 May 2019, Lisbon, Portugal, pp. 1565-1570