Bioenergy scenarios that contribute to a sustainable energy future in the EU27

Three scenarios are developed to illustrate the likely impacts of sustainability criteria on biomass supply and demand within the Biomass Futures project. This paper presents the rationale behind these scenarios. The reference scenario re‐analyzes the NREAP bioenergy demands based on the EU Renewable Energy Directive sustainability criteria targeted to biofuels for transport. It provides a refined basis for assessing sustainable bioenergy supply curves. As such, it is expected that this scenario provides member states with direct input to update their National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) templates and to benchmark the available information with a coherent, harmonized approach of estimating the biomass role in the different markets (heat, electricity, and transport) for each member state. The sustainability scenario, on the other hand, expands its coverage to electricity and heat production and applies the sustainability criteria to all bioenergy sectors. Additionally, it considers more stringent greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation criteria for all bioenergy carriers (70%). A high biomass scenario focuses on stronger policy ambitions. The objective of this scenario is to analyze the role of biomass in view of the quite large amount of unutilized biomass potential in the EU, even when the sustainability criteria are included in analyzing the potential. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd