Renewable energy sector in Belarus: A review

Belarus (BY) faces broad needs for energy security enhancement, energy diversification, and improvements in the state of the environment. Being the 13th largest importer of natural gas for energy BY has very limited energy resources of its own. Maximum reduction of energy imports is among the strategic tasks of raising the efficiency of Belarus' economy. The task fulfillment is possible through creation of a national infrastructure conductive to increasing the share of local and renewable sources of energy (RES) in heat and power energy production. BY's geographic location has several advantages for extensive use of most of the renewable energy (RE) and bioenergy sources. However, information on existing RE sector for the second-largest landlocked country in Europe is still hardly awailable for a wider audience of researchers working in the field of economic, environmental, political, planning and social aspects of energy supply in global proportions. The review on the renewable energy sector in BY so far has tried to give the background for RES, to describe their occurrence and conditions for using them, leading up to a discussion of the role of renewable energy in current and future energy systems, depending on a path of economic transition, social values, availability, and economic rules used to judge the viability of competing solutions. To ensure a simple, comprehensible and transparent presentation of the different available options of using RE for the provision of heat and power, the individual chapters describing the various renewable energy potentials and contribution options have been similarly structured whenever possible and sensible.