Assessment of agroforestry residue potentials for the bioeconomy in the European Union

Abstract

The biobased chemical industry is characterised by strong growth. Innovative products and materials such as biopolymers have been developed, and current European demand for biopolymers exceeds the domestic supply. Agroforestry residues can serve as main sources of the basic building blocks for chemicals and materials. This work assesses sustainably available agroforestry residues to feed a high added-value materials and product bioeconomy. To evaluate bioeconomic potential, a structured three-step approach is applied. Cultivation practices, sustainability issues, legislative restrictions, technical limitations and competitive applications are considered. All data regarding bioeconomic potential are processed on a regional level and mapped by ArcGIS. Our results identify wheat straw as the most promising source in the agricultural sector, followed by maize stover, barley straw and rape straw, which all contain a total concentration of lignocellulose of more than 80% of dry matter. In the forestry sector, residue bark from two coniferous species, spruce and pine, is the most promising source, with approximately 70% lignocellulose. Additionally, coniferous bark contains considerable amounts of tannin, which has attracted increasing interest for industrial utilisation. A sensitivity analysis concerning removal rates, residue-to-crop ratios, changes in farming technologies and competing applications is applied at the end of the study to consolidate our results.

Socioeconomic Indicators to Monitor the EU’s Bioeconomy in Transition

“…For CEEC, several examples underpin the existing gap from the northwestern EU countries [42]. Similarly, the potential from forestry and agroforestry residues could be further exploited [43].…”

Straw Stocks as a Source of Renewable Energy. A Case Study of a District in Poland

“…In other countries, the growing interest in straw as a source of energy has encouraged making more detailed assessments of its availability for bioenergy production [22,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. For instance, it has been estimated that the total UK crop residues equate 20.4 Mt dry matter production, of which 8.37 Mt were collectable and 4.2 Mt were available [33].…”

Characteristics of Sustainable Bioeconomy in the CEE Macro-region

“…De nitions and analysis of features of these concepts are published by several authors such as -not aimin to be e haustive ovács et. al., 2015 irchherr et al, 2017 eissdoerfer et al, 2017 Ellen acarthur Foundation, describin and analysin CE A uilar et al, 2018ell et al, 2018D'Amato et al, 2017Dupont-In lis et al, 2018Efken et al, 2016olden et al, 2018Patermanna et al, 2018Philp, 2018onzon et al, 2017onzon et al, 2018Scarlat et al, 2015u e et al, 2016Pavone et al, 2017ewandowski, 2017Filho et al, 2018Sch tte, 2018Thorenz et al, 2018 ozniak et al, 2018 describin and analysin bioeconomy esides scienti c papers several policy documents, law proposals have been published, amon others by the European Commission EC 4 or the OECD 5 . The research ndin s and the policy papers are considered widely spread and available lots of them are open access thus the authors do not o into eneral details, do not list the sta es of the evolution of these research elds, they only intend to stress that similarities and differences amon the abovementioned concepts are still ambi uous and name their preference for de nitions.…”