Expert Consultation Sustainable biomass

25 – 26 October 2007 Dubrovnik, Croatia

IEA Bioenergy Tasks 29, 38 and 40 organized a joint expert consultation on “Sustainable Bioenergy” in Dubrovnik, 25-25 October 2007.
As output of this meeting a joint statement on sustainability of bioenergy [104 KB] is available.

The full program and copies of the individual presentations are available at the Task 38 website:
http://ieabioenergy-task38.org/workshops/dubrovnik07/

Below, also a brief summary is presented:

The use of biomass in Europe and other places is strongly increasing due to policies, such as the EU Bio-electricity directive, liquid biofuels directive, EU Emissions Trading System etc. One of the reasons for these policies is the attempt to meet the GHG targets in the Kyoto Protocol. These and other policies trigger an increase in biomass use in developing countries (CDM), and in industrialized countries. The latter obtain their biomass both from domestic, as well as use biomass that is traded internationally.

The issue of sustainability (including CO2 neutrality and non-GHG aspects) of biomass energy is a hot topic, both where biomass is traded, as well where it is used locally (CDM, increasingly also in industrialized countries). Increasingly, the impact of biomass on land use and land-use change is questioned. Examples include the spreading of oil-palm plantations in SE Asia, at the cost of natural forest ecosystems. Other impacts of increased biomass use could include increased agricultural commodity prices (soybean price increases observed recently, maize prices in Mexico).

On the other hand, biomass can offer many of the already well recognised social and economic benefits like employment and income generation, support to rural development and traditional industries, increased security of energy supply, reduced regional trade balance, and many others

Sustainable biomass is definitely not a new question and it also concerns biomass for pulp and paper, timber, and other purposes. Sustainable bioenergy will probably not be able to re-invent the wheel, but will have to be dealt with in a broader context of material and energy uses of biomass. Also, some of the existing tools, like FSC certification, CCBA, and others, may have to be used in ensuring and implementing sustainable biomass use.

The Expert Consultation has been organized in such a way that after a sequence of presentations for stimulation of the discussions, large space has been given to interactive discussions in 2 working groups, one on Global GHG sustainability and the other one on local environmental and socio-economic sustainability. The meeting ended with a plenary session, in which each working group presented their results and their proposals for further cooperations between involved IEA Bioenergy Tasks.