Bioenergy scenarios that contribute to a sustainable energy future in the EU27

Abstract

Three scenarios are developed to illustrate the likely impacts of sustainability criteria on biomass supply and demand within the Biomass Futures project. This paper presents the rationale behind these scenarios. The reference scenario re-analyzes the NREAP bioenergy demands based on the EU Renewable Energy Directive sustainability criteria targeted to biofuels for transport. It provides a refi ned basis for assessing sustainable bioenergy supply curves. As such, it is expected that this scenario provides member states with direct input to update their National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) templates and to benchmark the available information with a coherent, harmonized approach of estimating the biomass role in the different markets (heat, electricity, and transport) for each member state. The sustainability scenario, on the other hand, expands its coverage to electricity and heat production and applies the sustainability criteria to all bioenergy sectors. Additionally, it considers more stringent greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation criteria for all bioenergy carriers (70%). A high biomass scenario focuses on stronger policy ambitions. The objective of this scenario is to analyze the role of biomass in view of the quite large amount of unutilized biomass potential in the EU, even when the sustainability criteria are included in analyzing the potential.

Outlook on biofuels in future studies: A systematic literature review

“…While considering the likelihood of surprising changes are known as the main advantage of this approach [2,[76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85], this likelihood is discussed explicitly in just two reviewed descriptive studies [20,28]. However, disruptive change (e.g., extensive social principles) is mentioned in [53,60,86]. Likewise, although some studies have highlighted the significance of participatory methods in descriptive scenario planning [76,80], the study only in [20], [39], and [42] included stakeholders in the scenario creation process.…”

“…Biofuels were found to develop gradually in business-as-usual scenarios [20,42,53,88,132]. Only in the presence of rigorous support from governments, fast diffusion of biofuels was found to take place (even though the support alone is not considered adequate for the rapid spread) [53,88], or massive disruptions (e.g., changes in social principles) [53,60,86], technological inventions which dramatically decrease expenses [20], increasing oil price [88] or expanding climate consciousness [165].…”

“…Some of the studies [37,49,60,135,183] have focused on the growth of biofuels' market uptake. The main factors affecting the growth of the market after the entry phase include energy and climate policies [37,183], technology development in industries [49,183], oil price [37,135], perceived biofuel potential [60,135,183].…”

“…In the published literature, the definition of biofuel is broad and not always consistent. Most of the studies available refer to the first-and second-generation liquid biofuels [14,26,39,42,50,[57][58][59][60][61][62] and some to third-generation, e.g., lignocellulosic fuels [13,16,[63][64][65][66][67]. Here the main focus is on biomassderived fuels for transportation, power generation, heating, and combined heat and power.…”

Balance and saving of GHG emissions in thermochemical biorefineries

“…However, the major impact is associated with biorefineries using edible biomass or energy crops [50]. Although indirect land-use change is still under discussion, lignocellulosic biomass, wastes and residues are not included in the regulation of indirect land-use change [48,51].…”