Short rotation woody crops for bioenergy: a financial, energetic and environmental perspective

One of the most important challenges faced by mankind in the 21st century is the mitigation of climate change. This PhD dissertation dealt with one specific bioenergy source, i.e. short rotation woody crops (SRWCs), as a direct measure to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions involving the partial substitution of fossil fuels. The dissertation calculated the financial performance and the GHG and energy benefits of SRWCs for bioenergy, and studied the existing Flemish government support scheme for the promotion of electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E).;The first part showed that SRWCs for bioenergy are not financially viable in the majority of the countries and regions across the globe, without additional (government) support. A detailed cash-flow model, POPFINUA, was developed to determine the profitability and the production costs of SRWCs in Belgium. A case-study revealed a number of bottlenecks to the widespread deployment of SRWCs, the most important being the high land cost and the limited availability of appropriate machinery to cultivate SRWCs. Additional government subsidies are also necessary to make SRWCs for bioenergy profitable in Belgium.;The second part focused on the energy and GHG benefits of SRWCs adopting a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. An elaborate study of existing LCA data on SRWCs and a case-study of the global warming contribution of SRWCs on agricultural land in Belgium showed that SRWCs for bioelectricity are energy efficient. They also provide GHG savings as compared to the non-renewable grid mix electricity production.;The last part revealed that the recent (2013) modifications to the Flemish support scheme for RES-E do not provide adequate measures to tackle the shortcomings of the previous incentive scheme. The most important shortcomings were the malfunctioning of the green certificate market, the lack of qualification of renewable energy technologies and the high excess profits. The current legislation does not remediate the inefficiency of the green certificate market. The introduced technology bands to differentiate the support for various RES-E technologies are too simplistic. A simulation exercise comparing the revenues through the 2013 Flemish system with the revenues through the German feed-in tariff scheme confirms the excess profits.