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Bioenergy is the EU's leading renewable energy source at present. Understanding bioenergy's contribution to the future EU energy mix is strategically relevant for mid to long term climate targets. This review consolidates recent projections of both supply and demand dynamics for EU bioenergy to 2050, drawing from resource-focused, demand-driven and integrated assessment approaches. Projections are synthesised to identify absolute ranges, determine cohesion with policy and draw insights on the implications for the scale of development, trade and energy security. Supply side studies have undergone methodological harmonisation efforts in recent years. Despite this, due to assumptions on key uncertainties such as feedstock yields, technical potential estimates range from 9 to 25 EJyr-1 of EU domestically available biomass for energy in 2050. Demand side projections range between 5 and 19 EJyr-1 by 2050. This range is primarily due to variations in study assumptions on key influential developments such as economic competitivity of bioenergy, EU energy efficiency gains within the power sector, flexibility for meeting mitigation targets and technological portfolios. Upper bound technical supply estimates are able meet future demand wholly from the domestic resource base, holding the potential to reduce total EU primary energy import dependency 22% points from the current EU roadmap trajectory. However, due to part of this domestic resource base being deemed economically inaccessible or of insufficient quality, interregional imports are projected to increase from current 4% to 13–76%. Emergence of non-energy applications are projected to compete for at least 10% of the biomass needed to fulfil bioenergy demand in 2050.

Management strategies for loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) plantations in the Southeastern USA can be adapted to fulfill both the demand for wood products and for bioenergy. This study quantifies the impact of plantation management choices on the cumulative carbon balance and the net present value of loblolly pine plantations at the stand level, as well as the wood supply cost for bioenergy production for these different management strategies. The strategies assessed (conventional, additional thinning and short rotation) are characterised by planting density, thinning age and rotation period, each with and without collection and utilization of slash residues for bioenergy. The total wood supply costs for bioenergy include the cultivation, harvesting and transport costs for small diameter trees and slash. The results show that the carbon balance after 100 years is 205 (247), 214 (268) and 149 (195) Mg ha−1 for the conventional, additional thinning, and short rotation loblolly pine plantation management strategies (within parentheses: same strategies with slash utilization). The conventional strategy has the lowest wood supply costs for bioenergy, 47 (46) $ Mg−1 pulpwood, followed by the additional thinning strategy, 50 (49) $ Mg−1 pulpwood, and 54 (52) $ Mg−1 pulpwood for the short rotation management strategy. In conclusion, switching from the current conventional strategy without the utilization of slash for bioenergy to an additional thinning strategy with the use of slash increases the overall carbon accumulation by about 31%, at marginally higher wood supply cost. Adapting plantation management strategies can have a positive effect on the economic performance and on the carbon balance of loblolly pine plantations. Integration of wood supply for bioenergy and traditional forestry sectors can lead to co-benefits in terms of cost reduction and carbon accumulation.

The export of wood pellets from the southeastern United States (USA) has grown significantly in recent years, following rising demand from Europe. Increased wood pellet demand could lead to spatially variable changes in timberland management and area in the USA. This study presents an assessment of the impacts of increasing wood pellet demand (an additional 11.6 Mt by 2030) on land-use dynamics, taking into account developments in other wood product markets as well as expected changes in other land uses. An economic model for the forest sector of the southeastern USA (SRTS) was linked to a land-use change model (PLUC) to identify potential locations of land-use change following scenarios of demand for pellets and other wood products. Projections show that in the absence of additional demand for wood pellets, natural timberland area is projected to decline by 450-15 000 km(2) by 2030, mainly through urbanization and pine plantation establishment. Under the high wood pellet demand scenario, more (2000-7500 km(2)) natural timberland area is retained and more (8000-20 000 km(2)) pine plantation is established. Shifts from natural timberland to pine plantation occur predominantly in the Atlantic coastal region. Future work will assess the impact of projected transitions in natural timberland and pine plantations on biodiversity and carbon storage. This modeling framework can be applied for multiple scenarios and land-use projections to identify locations of timberland area changes for the whole southeastern USA, thereby informing the debate about potential impacts of wood pellet demand on land-use dynamics and environmental services. (c) 2017 The Authors. Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining published by Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The expansion of the ethanol industry in Brazil faces two important challenges: to reduce total ethanol production costs and to limit the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of the ethanol produced. The objective of this study is to economically optimize the scale and location of ethanol production plants given the expected expansion of biomass supply regions. A linear optimization model is utilized to determine the optimal location and scale of sugarcane and eucalyptus industrial processing plants given the projected spatial distribution of the expansion of biomass production in the state of Goias between 2012 and 2030. Three expansion approaches evaluated the impact on ethanol production costs of expanding an existing industry in one time step (one-step), or multiple time steps (multi-step), or constructing a newly emerging ethanol industry in Goias (greenfield). In addition, the GHG emission intensity of the optimized ethanol supply chains are calculated. Under the three expansion approaches, the total ethanol production costs of sugarcane ethanol decrease from 894 US$/m(3) ethanol in 2015 to 752, 715, and 710 US$/m(3) ethanol in 2030 for the multi-step, one step and greenfield expansion respectively. For eucalyptus, ethanol production costs decrease from 635 US$/m(3) in 2015 to 560 and 543 US$/m(3) in 2030 for the multi-step and one-step approach. A general trend is the use of large scale industrial processing plants, especially towards 2030 due to increased biomass supply. We conclude that a system-wide optimization as a marginal impact on overall production costs. Utilizing all the predefined sugarcane and eucalyptus supply regions up to 2030, the results showed that on average the GHG emission intensity of sugarcane cultivation and processing is 80 kg CO2/m(3), while eucalyptus GHG emission intensity is 1290 kg CO2/m(3). This is due to the high proportion of forest land that is expected to be converted to eucalyptus plantations. Future optimization studies may address further economic or GHG emission improvement potential by optimizing the GHG emission intensity or perform a multi-objective optimization procedure. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper aims to provide insights in the cost developments of offshore wind energy in Europe. This is done by analysing 46 operational offshore wind farms commissioned after 2000. An increase of the Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) is found that is linked to the distance to shore and depth of more recent wind farms and commodity prices. Analysis results indicate that these two factors are only responsible for about half of the observed CAPEX increase, suggesting other factors such as turbine market with limited competition also led to an increasing CAPEX. Using CAPEX, Annual Energy Production, Financings costs and Operational Expenditures, the development of average Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCoE) is shown to increase from 120 €/MWh in 2000 towards 190 €/MWh in 2014, which is a direct result of the CAPEX increase. The results indicate very different LCoE values among European countries, from currently about 100 Euro/MWh in Denmark and Sweden to 150-220 Euro/MWh in all other countries investigated suggesting an effect of national policy frameworks on the LCoE of offshore wind energy.

An analysis by Sterman et al (2018 Environ. Res. Lett. 13 015007) suggests that use of wood for bioenergy production results in a worse climate outcome than from using coal. However, many of the assumptions on which their primary wood bioenergy scenario is based are not realistic and therefore are not informative. Assumptions of uncharacteristically long rotations for southern pine plantations, no utilization of wood for longer-duration products, and a single harvest over 100 years understate the carbon performance of current forest management practices. We provide references that support realistic modeling of forest carbon dynamics that are reflective of current practice and therefore more informative.

Bioenergy is the single largest source of renewable energy in the European Union (EU-28); of this, 14% was produced from agricultural feedstocks in 2012. This chapter provides an overview of the current use (for bioenergy) and future potential of agricultural feedstocks for (amongst others) biorefinery purposes in the European Union. The main application of these feedstocks is currently the production of biofuels for road transport. Biodiesel makes up 80% of the European biofuel production, mainly from rapeseed oil, and the remaining part is bioethanol from wheat and sugar beet. Dedicated woody and grassy crops (mainly miscanthus and switchgrass) are currently only used in very small quantities for heat and electricity generation. There is great potential for primary agricultural residues (mainly straw) but currently only part of this is for heat and electricity generation. Agricultural land currently in use for energy crop cultivation in the EU-28 is 4.4 Mio ha, although the land area technically available in 2030 is estimated to be 16–43 Mio ha, or 15–40% of the current arable land in the EU-28. There is, however, great uncertainty on the location and quality of that land. It is expected that woody and grassy crops together with primary agricultural residues should become more important as agricultural feedstocks.