September 16, within the Joint Project of the United Nations Development Programme / Global Environment Facility (UNDP/GEF) and the Government of Belarus "Biomass Energy for Heating and Hot Water Supply in Belarus", an official start-up of the first demonstration site – a boiler-house of the "Volat-1" PK LLC, working on wood wastes – took place.

The "Volat-1" Enterprise locates in the town of Uzda of the Minsk Region and employs 210 persons. The main products of the enterprise are heat-saving window units, doors, timber and lumber articles.

The funds to erect the boiler-house came from three sources: the UNDP/GEF, the Energy Ministry's Innovation Foundation aimed at energy saving, and the funds of the proprietor of the site – the "Volat-1" Woodworking Enterprise. The boiler-house, which is working on wood wastes, is a modern fully automated facility, whose basic fuel is chipped wood and sawdust with humidity below 45 %. The boiler-house has two automated boilers, having thermal capacity of one megawatt each. The manufacturer of the basic equipment is the Belarusian enterprise "Belcotlomash" NPP, which has won the tender on delivery of the equipment for the boiler-house. Operation of such a boiler-house allows saving about 1000-1500 tons of fuel equivalent per year depending on the load level of the boiler equipment. The reduction of hotbed gas (СО2) emissions will make about 2000 tons per year.

It is worth a special noting that the UNDP/GEF Project (the abbreviated name – the "Biomass Energy") is the first full-scale project of this type in the country, financed by the Global Environment Facility. The term to implement the Project is 4 years. Its schedule includes a range of organizational and technical steps directed at elimination of obstacles to a wider use of wood wastes as fuel, including implementation of six pilot projects. Five of them relate to switching the existing various-capacity boiler-houses from mineral fuels to burning wooden wastes. The boiler-house commissioned on September 16, 2004, is the first of these five demonstration objects.

The UNDP/GEF Project has been developed through active participation of the Committee on Energy Efficiency at the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus, the UN Development Programme, the UN's Economic Commission for Europe; the latter has acted as the Project initiator, rendered and continues rendering support in its implementation. The Belarusian party of the Project is the Committee on Energy Efficiency at the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus, who is also a co-financer. The "Biomass Energy" Project aims also at achieving a global effect of decreasing emissions of hotbed gases due to replacement of mineral fuels by renewed ones, one of them being wood fuel.

Additional information on implementation of the Project may be found at the Project web site: www.bioenergy.by.

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