Namibia suffers from bush encroachment, which is disruptive to livestock farming.

The centre also developed the technology for bush chips.

According to the study, the production of chips for power plants is technically possible.

However, electricity production with a capacity of 5 to 20 mega watts (MW), which was studied, is not economically profitable without investment aid and benefits from emissions trading.

"However, the conversion of one boiler in the Van Eck coal power station in Windhoek to use wood biomass is profitable," the Finnish researchers said in a statement yesterday.

Bush chips are an important source of raw material in electricity production in Namibia.

Bush encroachment affects about 10 million hectares in northern, central and eastern Namibia with 1 000 to 10 000 bushes per hectare.

The amount of wood biomass for producing chips from these bush species per hectare would be 5 to 25 tonnes.

"The overgrowth of bush can be managed by thinning and leaving 200 to 300 of the largest bushes to grow on the savannah.

The thinned bushes re-grow from their roots, and thinning can be repeated after several years.

The area affected by the overgrowth of bush produces in total 125 million tonnes of biomass," the Finnish Research Centre noted.

Presently invader bush, which causes encroachment, is used for firewood, about 1 million tonnes a year and for charcoal production to the tune of 0,3 million tonnes a year.

Namibia also has a wood briquette factory, which produces about 6 000 tonnes of the bush bricks as they are called locally, from bush chips.

The bush chip production trials by the Finnish researchers were done on a farm owned by the Cheetah Conservation Fund.

After being cut it takes two to three weeks of drying for the bush to reduce moisture by 20 per cent.

When the bush is sufficiently dry, it is chipped in a drum chipper.

The chipper blows the chips straight into a tractor trailer, which takes them to the briquette factory 40 km away.

Average yield in the tests was 7 tonnes per hectare.

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