About Biomass

Biomass is a quite general term for material derived from growing plants or from animal manure. Bioenergy refers to the technical systems through which biomass is produced or collected, converted and used as an energy source. A wide variety of conversion routescan be distinguished that produce a variety of energy carriers either in a solid, liquid or gaseous form. These energy carriers address all types of energy markets: heat, electricity and transportation.

Bioenergy already provides the majority of renewable energy worldwide and is considered to have the potential to provide a large fraction of world energy demand over the next century. At the same time, if biomass systems are managed properly, bioenergy will contribute to meet the requirement of reducing carbon emissions.

Bioenergy represented a 68% of the total gross inland consumption of renewables in 2011. Solid biomass and renewable waste are the main source of bioenergy accounting for 115Mtoe in 2011, an 8,4% of the total final energy consumption in Europe. It plays an essential role in countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Finalnd and Sweden whre the consumption is above 25%

Estimated demand for biomass for energy in the EU27 countries based on national renewable energy projections and reported conversion efficiencies (Bentsen and Felby, Biotechnology for Biofuels, 2012)

Heat consumption from solid biomass (2011): 64,9 MTOW

Electricity produced from solid biomass (2011): 72,8TWh

Primary energy production from solid biomass (2011): 78,8 MTOE

The combined European (EU-27) consumption of biofuels represented 13,615,000 ktoe (tonnes of oil equivalent) in 2013 (EUR-ObservER, 2014), with a strong prominence of biodiesel which represents 79% of European biofuel consumption and 19,9% in the case of bioethanol. The orverall figures represent a growth of 28% between 2008 and 2013. Furthermore, the production of biodiesel reached 91,879,000 tonnes of oil equivalent in 2012 experiencing a 28% growth in the last five years, while bioethanol reached 20,359,000 and had a 32% growth in the same period.