Barriers to European bioenergy expansion

The European Commission has set challenging targets for renewable energy expansion in Europe as part of its strategy to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Expansion of existing bioenergy capacity has a key role to play in ensuring these targets are met. However, significant technical and non-technical barriers to deployment of biomass technologies remain throughout Europe, the latter often being more difficult to address. Non-technical barriers are fundamental obstacles to biomass development. They represent limits or boundaries to the extent of deployment, often related to institutional frameworks, perceptions, socio-economic issues or engagement of and interfaces with related technology sectors. This paper presents an analysis, characterization and prioritization of the current non-technical barriers to thermo-chemical bioenergy expansion in Europe. Policy, economics and stakeholder understanding are strategically important if bioenergy potential is to be realized. Detailed policy evaluation with case study history from 4 European member states shows continuity of policy instruments is critical and specific support instruments work better than more general mechanisms. Improved stakeholder understanding (with the general public as a relevant stakeholder group) is key to increasing the acceptability of bioenergy. This requires different parallel strategies for different sectors/target groups. Promotional campaigns, dissemination of information to key multipliers, provision of independent factual information to the public, appropriate frameworks for handling approvals for new plants, forums for stakeholder interaction and certification schemes all have a role to play in improving bioenergy acceptability

A comparison of two low grade heat recovery options

Low grade heat (LGH) recovery is one way of increasing industrial energy efficiency and reducing associated greenhouse gas emissions. The organic rankine cycle (ORC) and condensing boilers are two options that can be used to recover low grade heat (<250 °C). This paper assesses the lifecycle greenhouse gas reduction impacts and discounted payback periods associated with both technologies. Generation of electricity through the operation of the ORC saves approximately 11 kt of CO2 annually, but the high carbon intensity of the coking process means this has a negligible influence (<1 %) on the overall process lifecycle impacts. However, if the electricity generated offsets the external purchasing of electricity this results in favourable economic payback periods of between 3 and 6 years. The operation of a condensing boiler within a woodchip boiler reduces the fuel required to achieve an increased thermal output. The thermal efficiency gains reduce the lifecycle impacts by between 11 and 21%., and reflect payback periods as low as 1.5 to 2 years, depending on the condenser type and wood supply chain. The two case studies are used to highlight the difficulty in identifying LGH recovery solutions that satisfy multiple environmental, economic and wider objectives

Maximizing the greenhouse gas reductions from biomass: The role of life cycle assessment

Biomass can deliver significant greenhouse gas reductions in electricity, heat and transport fuel supply. However, our biomass resource is limited and should be used to deliver the most strategic and significant impacts. The relative greenhouse gas reduction merits of different bioenergy systems (for electricity, heat, chemical and biochar production) were examined on a common, scientific basis using consistent life cycle assessment methodology, scope of system and assumptions. The results show that bioenergy delivers substantial and cost-effective greenhouse gas reductions. Large scale electricity systems deliver the largest absolute reductions in greenhouse gases per unit of energy generated, while medium scale wood chip district heating boilers result in the highest level of greenhouse gas reductions per unit of harvested biomass. However, ammonia and biochar systems deliver the most cost effective carbon reductions, while biochar systems potentially deliver the highest greenhouse gas reductions per unit area of land. The system that achieves the largest reduction in greenhouse gases per unit of energy does not also deliver the highest greenhouse gas reduction per unit of biomass. So policy mechanisms that incentivize the reductions in the carbon intensity of energy may not result in the best use of the available resource. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a flexible tool that can be used to answer a wide variety of different policy-relevant, LCA “questions”, but it is essential that care is taken to formulate the actual question being asked and adapt the LCA methodology to suit the context and objective