Will biomass be used for bioenergy or transportation biofuels? What drivers will influence biomass allocation

Abstract

Potential competition for biomass for current and future bioenergy/biofuel uses in Brazil, Denmark, Sweden and the USA were compared. In each of these countries, bioenergy and biofuels are already important in their energy mix. However, there is limited competition for biomass between bioenergy (heat/power/residential/industrial) and transportation biofuel applications. This situation is likely to continue until advanced biofuel technology becomes much more commercially established. In each of these countries, biomass is predominantly used to produce bioenergy, even in those regions where biofuels are significant component of their transportation sector (Brazil, Sweden and USA). The vast majority of biofuel production continues to be based on sugar, starch and oil rich feedstocks, while bioenergyis produced almost exclusively from forest biomass with agricultural biomass having a small, but increasing, secondary role. Current and proposed commercial scale biomass-to-ethanol facilities almost exclusively use agriculture derived residues (corn stover/wheat straw/sugarcane bagasse). Competition for biomass feedstocks for bioenergy/biofuel applications, is most likely to occur for agricultural biomass with coproduct lignin and other residues used to concomitantly produce heat and electricity on site at biofuel production facilities.

Keywords

bioenergy / biofuel / biomass / renewable energy policy

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the International Energy Agency Bioenergy Implementation Agreement, Task 39 (Liquid Biofuels).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Jinguang Hu, William James Cadham, Susan van Dyk, and Jack N. Saddler declare that there is no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2017. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0