LCA of a multifunctional bioenergy chain based on pellet production

Energy and Environmental Aspects of Using Eucalyptus from Brazil for Energy and Transportation Services in Europe

“…In general, pellet production promotes the conversion of woody resources into a uniform product with superior combustion properties and improved performance in terms of handling, transportation, storage, and combustion performance [19]. Wood pellets are produced from the eucalyptus wood chips in a pellet plant.…”

“…Much has been written about the environmental issues of this increasing use of woody biomass for bioenergy, e.g., [1,7,[13][14][15], in terms of net climate change mitigation benefits, competition for land resources, and potential adverse side-effects on biodiversity and other ecosystem services. A large body of work has also quantified the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of wood pellets from short-rotation coppice (SRC) systems [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], roundwood [1,[26][27][28][29], logging residues [8,25,30,31], and wood industry residues [32,33], as well as the energy and transportation services from the international market of wood pellets, e.g., [28,30,[34][35][36][37][38]. Results, including the international trade of bioenergy products, usually suggest that the highest avoided emissions occur when wood pellets are used to replace energy systems from high-emission fossil fuel, such as coal e.g., [6][7][8].…”

“…Climate impacts related to wood pellet production and transatlantic shipment (e.g., from North America to Europe) are found to contribute as of approximately 50% and 30% of total climate impacts, respectively [37]. Other environmental impacts are reported, varying mostly due to technical aspects of the chosen bioenergy system (e.g., biomass production system, transportation, plant efficiency and technology), modelling assumptions, and methodological issues (e.g., methods to deal with the coproducts) [17][18][19]28].High-density energy wood plantations managed on short-rotation coppice (SRC) are seen as a promising source of biomass for different final uses, since they could help to mitigate some of the environmental issues arising from using forest wood resources for bioenergy [17,18,39,40]. It is mostly because SRC production systems present relatively higher yields than conventional forestry systems [39], and the possibility to be gown on marginal land to reverse grassland degradation, thereby being beneficial under both a climate change mitigation and land restoration perspective [16,41].To the best of our knowledge, no previous studies examined the environmental implications of alternative energy and transportation services in Europe form novel technologies and pioneering eucalyptus short-rotation coppice (SRC) systems in Brazil.…”

“…This research gap is particularly important because many global temperature stabilization scenarios aligning with a 2 or 1.5 • C target predict a large increase in the biomass supply to the international markets, especially from land-rich regions, such as Latin America and Africa, to high energy-demanding regions, such as Europe and East Asia [2,3,42,43]. However, most of the existing literature focuses on the climate impacts of SRC systems in North America, e.g., [17,44], or Europe, e.g.,[16,18,19,41], while a few focus on other regions, e.g., [27,40]. The environmental conditions and locations in which biomass resources grow considerably affect yields, management systems, and the product characteristics [40].…”

“…Climate impacts related to wood pellet production and transatlantic shipment (e.g., from North America to Europe) are found to contribute as of approximately 50% and 30% of total climate impacts, respectively [37]. Other environmental impacts are reported, varying mostly due to technical aspects of the chosen bioenergy system (e.g., biomass production system, transportation, plant efficiency and technology), modelling assumptions, and methodological issues (e.g., methods to deal with the coproducts) [17][18][19]28].…”