Sustainability impacts of increased forest biomass feedstock supply - a comparative assessment of technological solutions

Abstract

Sustainably managed forests provide renewable raw material that can be used for primary/secondary conversion products and as biomass for energy generation. The potentially available amounts of timber, which are still lower than annual increments, have been published earlier. Access to this timber can be challenging for small-dimensioned assortments; however, technologically improved value chains can make them accessible while fulfilling economic and environment criteria. This paper evaluates the economic, environmental and social sustainability impacts of making the potentially available timber available with current and technologically improved value chains. This paper focuses on increasing the biomass feedstock supply for energy generation. Quantified impact assessments show which improvements - in terms of costs, employment, fuel and energy use, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions - can be expected if better mechanized machines are provided. Using three different methods - Sustainability Impacts Assessment (SIA), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Emission Saving Criteria (ESC) - we calculated current and innovative machine solutions in terms of fuel use, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions, to quantify the impact of the technology choice and also the effect of the choice of assessment method. Absolute stand-alone values can be misleading in analyses, and the use of different impact calculation approaches in parallel is clarifying the limits of using LCA-based approaches. The ESC has been discussed for the recast of the Renewable Energy Directive. Potential EU-wide results are presented.

Keywords

Bioenergy; technological innovations; value chains; sustainability; Renewable Energy Directive targets

Published in

International Journal of Forest Engineering
2018, Volume: 29, number: 2, pages: 99-116
Publisher: TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC

SLU Authors

• Athanassiadis, Dimitris

  • Department of Forest Biomaterials and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG7 Affordable and clean energy
SDG12 Responsible consumption and production
SDG15 Life on land


UKÄ Subject classification

Bioenergy


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14942119.2018.1459372

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/97530