Perspectives on future bioenergy use and trade in a European policy context

Doctoral thesis, 2009

This thesis, which consists of five separate papers, analyses the possibilities for increasing the use and trade of bioenergy, in a European policy context. In Paper I we investigate whether different policy objectives underlying the promotion of bioenergy (cost-effective climate change mitigation, reduced dependency on imported fuels, and job creation) agree on which bioenergy options should be used. The prospects for domestic bioenergy use in the EU from a cost-effectiveness perspective is analysed with an energy-economic systems model. We find that the different policy objectives do not fully agree on the order of priority among bioenergy options, but that primarily lignocellulose-based bioenergy options should be promoted to reach the first two mentioned objectives. In Papers II and III we analyse the possibility for selected bioenergy options in the EU. In Paper II we show that biomass co-firing with coal in the existing coal-fired power plants has the potential to contribute substantially to the development of renewable electricity in the EU and indicate the possibility for biomass import by sea to these plants. By modelling the district heating (DH) systems we show that the aggregated national DH heat sinks in the assessed EU countries are large enough to accommodate surplus heat from co-generation of biofuels for transportation and heat for DH at a scale that is substantial in an EU biofuel perspective (Paper III). But the prospects for this option depend on the cost-competitiveness compared to, e.g., other heat supply options, such as combined heat and power. Bioenergy trade is the topic of Papers IV and V. In Paper IV we assess the prospects for global bioenergy trade and, in particular, large-scale import of biofuels to Sweden. We find that besides possibly increasing costs and environmental and socioeconomic concerns, there are no major constraints for a large-scale import of biofuels to Sweden. In Paper V we analyse the cost-effectiveness of trade in CO2 credits and biofuels in the EU in different policy scenarios including CO2 emissions-reduction and biofuels-for-transport targets. Using an energy-economic systems model we find that trade in CO2 credits and solid biofuels are both cost-effective options in the analysed policy scenarios, but that liquid biofuels trade is only cost-effective in the case of biofuels-for-transport targets.