Assessment of the potential biomass supply in Europe using a resource-focused approach

This paper analyses the potential biomass Supply in the 15 EU countries (EU15), 8 new member states and 2 candidate countries (ACC10), plus Belarus and the Ukraine. The objective of this study is to make a more detailed assessment of the potential in Europe than previously undertaken. For this purpose five scenarios were designed to describe the short-, medium- and long-term potential of biomass for energy. The scenarios are based on assumptions regarding residue harvests, energy-crop yields and Surplus agricultural land. Energy-crop yields are correlated with the national wheat yields, a methodology we have not seen used in biomass assessments before. Our assessments show that under certain restrictions on land availability, the potential supply of biomass energy amounts to up to 11.7 EJy(-1) in the EU15 and 5.5 EJy(-1) in the ACC10. For comparison, the overall energy supply in the EU15 totalled 62.6 EJy(-1) in 2001. Consequently, there are no important resource limitations in meeting the biomass target, 5.6E Jy(-1) in the EU15 by 2010, which was set by the European Commission in the 1997 White paper on renewable energy sources (RES). However, given the slow implementation of the RES policy it is very unlikely that the biomass targets will be met. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.