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
