Five years left – How are the EU member states contributing to the 20% target for EU's renewable energy consumption; the role of woody biomass

Abstract

The European Union has set ambitious targets of raising the share of EU energy consumption produced from renewable resources from 20% by 2020 to 27% by 2030. The aim of this paper is to assess the role of woody biomass in renewable energy as gross final energy consumption in the European Union (the EU-28). The paper identifies leading and lagging countries in biomass development by focusing on their current biomass use and forecasts future perspectives. The research compares and evaluates the role of biomass in renewable energy in the EU-28 focusing on countries' potential resources and policy support. The study shows that all countries are making efforts to reach the 20% target in 2020 and exhibit a trend of increasing renewable energy as gross final energy consumption towards the new target of 2030. Solid biomass plays an important role in reaching the EU's renewable energy targets. The majority of the EU-28 countries are close to reaching their national renewable energy targets and show a very attractive biomass development. Unless energy consumption decreases however, some member states will face serious problems in reaching their renewable energy target in 2020. Following our analysis, the largest problems occur in those MS having a relative highenergy consumption pattern: France, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is unlikely that they can comply with expected renewable energy demand, unless they mobilize more woody biomass from their available domestic potential (France, Germany) or considerably increase their woody biomass imports (mostly wood pellets) from elsewhere (United Kingdom). Keywords Definitions Bioenergy: Bioenergy refers to energy derived from biofuels. Biomass: Refers to the biodegradable fraction of products, waste and residues from agricultural (including vegetal and animal substances), forestry and related industries, as well as the biodegradable fraction of industrial and municipal waste.  Bioliquids. Refers to the liquid fuels made from biomass for energy purposes other than transport (i.e.heating and electricity). Gross inland consumption of energy (GIC) is the first aggregate in the national energy balances. It refers to "apparent" consumption and is derived from the formula that takes into account primary production, exports, imports and stock changes. It includes the primary energy from fossil fuels, from renewable energies (biomass, wind, solar, hydro), derived heat and trade of electrical energy. Gross final energy consumption (GFEC) is calculated from national energy balances. GFEC starts with the GIC data, after which transformation losses, distribution losses and own consumption of electricity and heat within the energy sector are subtracted. The GFEC data can be divided over the sectors involved in the energy consumption, after the subtraction of non-energy consumption (e.g. use of cokes for chemical products). At the end, we remain with final energy consumption by industry, transport and households [3].4

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