Improved biomass policy

Moreover, the European Union has not yet established targets and guidelines concerning biofuels production and emissions levels for the period 2020—30. It has instead called for an improved biomass policy to maximize the resource and an efficient use of biomass in order to deliver robust and verifiable greenhouse gas savings and to guarantee fair competition for the various uses of biomass both in the construction sector, paper and pulp industries, as well as in biochemical and energy production. ... 

Energy from biomass is hardly commercially viable for any technological option at the current price levels of competing conventional alternatives in the Netherlands. Representative price levels for the production and supply of these alternatives are presented in Table 2. Due to the cunent process of liberalisation of both the electricity and the gas markets, prices are expected to drop substantially. Regarding electricity the decrease may lie in the order of 20 - 25%, whilst the gas wholesale prices may become 10-15% lower. Therefore, utilisation of renewable electricity from biomass is stimulated by financial and fiscal incentives to achieve the Dutch COj-targets. These measures should be placed in the above-mentioned framework of the Dutch policy to achieve an improvement of 10% energy supply from renewables in 2010,... 

These findings suggest that Federal policies could be more effective if they could be coordinated to enhance development of biomass energy. A reorganization of DOE s program along product lines would help to improve communications with industry and would increase DOE s effectiveness. 

SUveira, Semida, ed. Bioenergy Realizing the Potential. San Diego, Calif. Elsevier, 2005. Investigates and integrates the fundamental technical, policy, and economic issues as they relate to bioenergy projects in both developed and developing countries. Focuses on biomass availability and potential and covers market development and technical and economic improvements. 

It can be inferred that the business as usual approach encourages deforestation (forest loss) or nation growth. But it is obvious that deforestation will never promote any country s growth rather it will lead to a loss of biodiversity, GHG emissions from biomass combustion, and human rights violations. Thus several countries contradict this model and appreciate the later model for a sustainability approach. Wicke et al. (2011) clearly demonstrate that an additional demand for feedstock for biorefinery in the future will surely lead to forest cover loss unless and until a proper policy has been framed against this sort of LUC. The same study asserted that the biorefinery approach could be carried out without further forest cover loss by a combination of converting barren land and improving yields. 

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