Europruning project: Summary of final results

Pruning resources from permanent crops essentially are an unexploited biomass resource in the EU28 even though a significant amount of them, more than 13 million tonnes over dry basis, are currently produced every year. With the aim of promoting a change towards a larger utilisation of biomass from prunings, the EuroPruning project (Developing a new logistics chain for biomass from prunings, FP7-312078) has developed research and demonstration activities looking for solving the current gaps in technology and knowledge which slow down the mobilisation of agricultural prunings to the energy market. EuroPruning has developed solutions both to overcome the existing social and techno-economic barriers (related to harvesting, on-site pre-treatment, quality and transport) and to bring to the market woody solid biomass resources produced from the branches, cuttings or stems produced under the common agricultural practices on permanent crops. This paper presents a wrap-up of the EuroPruning most relevant results and contributions for Europe in the main activities that are being carried out in the project (EuroPruning finishes in mid July 2016): quality traceability, harvesting equipment, storage, cost-effective logistics (Complete Logistics Smart System), soil affections, social-economic-environmental assessments and finally, policy recommendations to tackle non-technical barriers.
Proceedings of the 24th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-9 June 2016, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 89-102