The possible contribution of agricultural crop residues to renewable energy targets in Europe: A spatially explicit study

This paper provides a geographical assessment of potential bioenergy production in the European Union from residues of eight agricultural crops (wheat, barley, rye, oat, maize, rice, rapeseed and sunflower). The evaluation is geographically explicit at the scale of 1km2 and is based on two main computational steps. In the first step the amount of crop residues resulting from statistical assessment based on the methodology developed by Scarlat et al. [1] have been spatially allocated on the EU-2711The EU-27 expression symbolizes the current status of EU enlargements. Further information: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Glossary:EU-27. territory using several auxiliary geospatial layers describing, for example, land cover, expected biomass productivity derived from soil parameters, climatic zones and topographical conditions. In the second step the number of model power plants (i.e., plants with a size of 50MW thermal input and a raw material demand of about 100kt/yr might be conveniently fed with available crop residues was estimated on the basis of two different allocation strategies implying a different grade of optimization. The results show that the estimated crop residue resources in EU-27 could provide fuel for about 850 plants expected to produce about 1500PJ/yr. Mobilization needs for the residues are also estimated, leading to a total amount of 1.5×1012–2×1012tkm are necessary for the full potential exploitation.