Suchergebnisse

This work is underlain by broad-based expectations that policy interventions such as EU 2020 goals for renewable energy will continue to drive increased international trade in biomass for energy. This work focuses on where and how large volumes of biomass for bioenergy may be brought to the market in the short to medium term and sought insights in the following areas: • the manner in which demand for biofuels can be driven by political goals; • the realism of expectations that biofuels can achieve political goals; • the nature of production/consumption structures and potential in different regions; • competence and resource needs for international bioenergy trade; • the nature of synergies and competition with incumbent industries. The work first examines immaturity and diversity in the bioenergy industry, and then presents and dissects policy cases to examine policy-making strengths and weaknesses. Management literature for emerging industrial sectors and policy literature are then used to support analysis of challenges posed by diversity in geographical, socio-economic conditions, and by energy carrier and supply chains differences. Arguments are then developed that a significant contribution to progress can be made by enhancing collective action; 'standardisation' of 'bioenergy offerings'; building the profession and professionalism; by improved interplay with other industries and stakeholders, and by improved input to policy-making processes. The report then presents quantifications for biomass resources potentially available in the near to medium term. These include residue flows from agriculture and forestry, and new dedicated agriculture-derived feedstock supply systems. Importantly, modelling supporting this analysis indicates that there is substantial scope for land-minimizing growth of world food supply. This is feasible through efficiency improvements in the food chains from existing land-in-use. Scenarios presented here indicate that it is feasible to reduce global agricultural requirements some 230 Mha from current levels while still meeting dietary requirements (mainstream FAO estimates indicate expansion by 280Mha). This provides significant scope for expansion of dedicated energy crops. If higher productivity is combined with dietary changes toward less land-demanding food, then agricultural area available for biomass-for-energy could increase to some 1000 Mha. The discussions in this report – institutional, supply chain, and biomass-bioenergy potential – all find common themes that point towards needs for enhanced sectoral action. These include: increased bioenergy-industry professionalism, aligned and consistent forms of collective action, strategic efforts to markedly increase public and political acceptance, more synergistic alliances with incumbent industries, careful application of third-party assessment schemes, the building of resilient technology strategies, and the consistent sourcing of biomass via pathways that remain accepted (legitimate) in the eyes of critical stakeholders. This analysis concludes that many of the constraints or 'barriers' being experienced by the sector can be anticipated by examination of ongoing events through management and policy assessment lenses. This in turn indicates that guidance is available for action, both in theory, and by building upon the documented experiences of other emerging sectors. However, it is also concluded that more evidence from the field is vital to enrich this work and the value it may offer the sector. The report closes with brief delineation of research work required to better document where, how and when the industry might act to more effectively – and legitimately – unlock the potential of bioenergy on a global scale. It also calls for dissemination of this report in global bioenergy networks as a seed for future work for the international bioenergy community.

Within the scope of the new Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union, in coherence with other EU policies, new incentives are developed for farmers to deploy practices that are beneficial for climate, water, soil, air, and biodiversity. Such practices include establishment of multifunctional biomass production systems, designed to reduce environmental impacts while providing biomass for food, feed, bioenergy, and other biobased products. Here, we model three scenarios of large-scale deployment for two such systems, riparian buffers and windbreaks, across over 81,000 landscapes in Europe, and quantify the corresponding areas, biomass output, and environmental benefits. The results show that these systems can effectively reduce nitrogen emissions to water and soil loss by wind erosion, while simultaneously providing substantial environmental co-benefits, having limited negative effects on current agricultural production. This kind of beneficial land-use change using strategic perennialization is important for meeting environmental objectives while advancing towards a sustainable bioeconomy.

In an effort to reduce fossil fuel consumption, the use of woody biomass for heat and power generation is growing. Key destination markets will be countries within the European Union, particularly the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium. While demand from Asia (particularly South Korea and Japan) will also increase, it will continue to play a secondary role. Across the EU, adoption of sustainability criteria for forest biomass based on the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) 2009/28/EC or similar criteria is likely. In the United Kingdom, the largest market for traded wood pellets, such criteria have already been proposed. As of 2015, only forest biomass that achieves at least a 60% reduction in GHG emissions, relative to the EU fossil fuel electricity average, can be used for bioenergy production and proof of SFM is required. In the Netherlands, the energy industry and non-governmental organisations achieved principal agreement on sustainability criteria for solid biomass, but issues of compliance testing and monitoring must still be addressed. In Flemish Belgium, the sustainability requirements for bioliquids may soon be applied to woody biomass. In Denmark, a voluntary industry agreement is set to ensure that all bioenergy production by 2019 is conducted sustainably. At present, internationally traded wood pellets from temperate and boreal biomes originate primarily from the United States, Canada and Russia. Among these, Canada offers large stretches of SFM-certified forests, but the US Southeast has seen the strongest increase in wood pellet production and export in recent years. The expansion of pellet production in the Southeast United States is mainly linked to available forest inventory (pulpwood in particular) and the competitive advantage gained by the relative proximity to demand markets in the EU. In addition to the mobilisation barriers observed in supply chains at the local and national scale, limitations in the supply of forest biomass for international trade will be influenced by ...

Society faces the double challenge of increasing biomass production to meet the future demands for food, materials and bioenergy, while addressing negative impacts of current (and future) land use. In the discourse, land use change (LUC) has often been considered as negative, referring to impacts of deforestation and expansion of biomass plantations. However, strategic establishment of suitable perennial production systems in agricultural landscapes can mitigate environmental impacts of current crop production, while providing biomass for the bioeconomy. Here, we explore the potential for such "beneficial LUC" in EU28. First, we map and quantify the degree of accumulated soil organic carbon losses, soil loss by wind and water erosion, nitrogen emissions to water, and recurring floods, in ∼81.000 individual landscapes in EU28. We then estimate the effectiveness in mitigating these impacts through establishment of perennial plants, in each landscape. The results indicate that there is a substantial potential for effective impact mitigation. Depending on criteria selection, 10–46% of the land used for annual crop production in EU28 is located in landscapes that could be considered priority areas for beneficial LUC. These areas are scattered all over Europe, but there are notable "hot-spots" where priority areas are concentrated, e.g., large parts of Denmark, western UK, The Po valley in Italy, and the Danube basin. While some policy developments support beneficial LUC, implementation could benefit from attempts to realize synergies between different Sustainable Development Goals, e.g., "Zero hunger", "Clean water and sanitation", "Affordable and Clean Energy", "Climate Action", and "Life on Land".

Long-standing debate over the benefits of forest conservation vs. those of forest resource use and substitution continue to occupy attention in Europe and beyond. To study this question, we simulate the short- and long-term consequences for atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations of different forest management strategies and forest product uses in Sweden. We compare the projected short- and long-term consequences of increasing forest use vs. increasing land set-asides. In all scenarios but one, forest management for wood production results in higher net GHG reduction than the alternative to set-aside forests for conservation. In all scenarios, annual carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration rates in conservation forests decline as maturing forests eventually reach a steady state, while they rise in all other forest management strategies. Thus, there is an apparent tradeoff between wood production and nature conservation. Forest set-asides are associated with sizable long-term opportunity costs corresponding to the foregone wood production capacity. Retained in the circular bioeconomy system over the long-term, forest management for wood production eventually stabilizes at significantly higher amounts than a management system which promotes greater shares of forest protection and conservation. In all cases, the long-term mitigation gains from wood production are cumulative and significant. Likewise, the indicative level of wood supply for biobased production that can be maintained without causing systematic loss in land carbon stocks is large. Such long-term consequences, however, are not properly accounted for in the European Union's (EU's) legislative LULUCF (Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry) carbon accounting framework, which effectively encourages land set-asides at the expense of forest wood production capacity.

Bioenergy deployment offers significant potential for climate change mitigation, but also carries considerable risks. In this review, we bring together perspectives of various communities involved in the research and regulation of bioenergy deployment in the context of climate change mitigation: Land-use and energy experts, landuse and integrated assessment modelers, human geographers, ecosystem researchers, climate scientists and two different strands of life-cycle assessment experts. We summarize technological options, outline the state-of-theart knowledge on various climate effects, provide an update on estimates of technical resource potential and comprehensively identify sustainability effects. Cellulosic feedstocks, increased end-use efficiency, improved land carbon-stock management and residue use, and, when fully developed, BECCS appear as the most promising options, depending on development costs, implementation, learning, and risk management. Combined heat and power, efficient biomass cookstoves and small-scale power generation for rural areas can help to promote energy access and sustainable development, along with reduced emissions. We estimate the sustainable technical potential as up to 100 EJ: high agreement; 100–300 EJ: medium agreement; above 300 EJ: low agreement. Stabilization scenarios indicate that bioenergy may supply from 10 to 245 EJ yr 1 to global primary energy supply by 2050. Models indicate that, if technological and governance preconditions are met, large-scale deployment (>200 EJ), together with BECCS, could help to keep global warming below 2° degrees of preindustrial levels; but such high deployment of land-intensive bioenergy feedstocks could also lead to detrimental climate effects, negatively impact ecosystems, biodiversity and livelihoods. The integration of bioenergy systems into agriculture and forest landscapes can improve land and water use efficiency and help address concerns about environmental impacts. We conclude that the high variability in pathways, uncertainties in technological development and ambiguity in political decision render forecasts on deployment levels and climate effects very difficult. However, uncertainty about projections should not preclude pursuing beneficial bioenergy options. ; publishedVersion ; © 2015. This is the authors' accepted and refereed manuscript to the article. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ DOI:10.1111/gcbb.12205

Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge the participation Omar Masera, Richard Plevin, Roberto Schaeffer, Rainer Zah and Jacob Mulugetta during the literature appraisal. Carmenza Robledo-Abad acknowledges support from the Swiss State Secretary of Economic Affairs. Helmut Haberl gratefully acknowledges funding from the Austrian Provision Programme, the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Global Change Programme) and the EU-FP7 project VOLANTE. Esteve Corbera acknowledges the support of the Spanish Research, Development and Innovation Secretariat through a 'Ramón y Cajal' research fellowship (RYC-2010-07183) and of a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (PCIG09-GA-2011-294234). Simon Bolwig acknowledges the support of the Innovation Fond Denmark. Alexander Popp acknowledges the support from the European Union's Seventh Framework Program project LUC4C (grant agreement no. 603542). Bart Muys acknowledges support from the KLIMOS Acropolis research network on sustainable development funded by VLIR/ARES/DGD (Belgian Development Aid). Rasmus Kløcker Larsen acknowledges funding from the Swedish research council Formas. Carol Hunsberger acknowledges the support of a postdoctoral fellowship from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. John Garcia-Ulloa is supported by the Mercator Foundation Switzerland and the Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center. Johan Lilliestam, Anna Geddes and Susan Hanger acknowledge the support from the European Research Council (ERC) consolidator grant, contract number 313533. Joana Portugal-Pereira acknowledges the support of National Centre of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq), under the Science Without Borders Programme (no 401164/2012-8). Richard Harper acknowledges funding from the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. ; Peer reviewed ; Publisher PDF