Biomass in different biotopes – an extensive resource - Biomass as Energy Source: Resources, Systems and Applications - page 92

5.2 BIOENERGY IN SOUTHERN EUROPE

We will nowmake a similar overview over southern Europe as has been done for northern Europe.
What we can notice is that the climate varies quite a lot also here between the mountain areas in
theAlps to the coastal areas along the Mediterranean. Especially in southern Spain, southern Italy
and southern Greece the climate is quite different compared to even northern Italy or northern
France. In the northern areas, the crops are quite similar to the southern parts of northern Europe.
We have many trees with broad leaves in the forests, and in the high altitudes in the Alps we see
trees with needles like spruce. Kazmierczyk et al. (2007) made a thorough investigation of the
biomass production as well as consumption in South East Europe and Eastern Europe, Caucasus
and Central Asia within a UNEP project. For the more western parts of southern Europe, Pascual
and Saúl (2008) made an overview of Biomass Resources in the EU Chrisgas project, where the
focus was on estimation of what available resources there are for gasification for production of
fuels for vehicles, primarily as DME (dimethyl ether). The plants were grouped into the categories
as indicated in Table 5.4.
This gives us a picture over what type of crops are growing in southern Europe and especially
the rice, vineyards, olives and many of the fruits like oranges are much more common in Southern
Europe than even the southern part of Northern Europe. Many crops are the same in northern and
southern Europe, although there are also quite a few that are wild in southern Europe but only
cultivated in gardens in northern Europe. Examples of herbs and habitats are given in Houdret
(2000) for example. Here also conditions for cultivation of these are addressed.
The analysis in this project was primarily to identify resources for a number of gasifiers. This
means that only waste of different kind were investigated: Herbaceous crop residues, woody crop
residues and forestry residues. The results from the author's analysis are shown in Table 5.5 for
12 countries.
If we recalculate these figures intoTWh/y the total will be forAgriculture 99 × 10 6

× 5.4MWh/

tonne × 10 − 6 = 535TWh/year potential and 265TWh/y available today. For forestry, the

corresponding figures are 1430 and 840TWh/year. Pascual and Saúl (2008) made a calcula-
tion for biomass in 12 countries and came to the conclusion that 205 Modt/y could be used to
produce DME (dimethylether). This would then give 66 Mt DME (3.1 kg biomass dry matter
gives 1 kg DME) which corresponds to 45 Mt diesel which is equivalent to 45 Mtoe (0.68 kg

Table 5.4. Different type of crop categories relevant to southern
Europeé. The numbers are different categories according
to the standard presented in Pascual and Saúl (2008).

Agricultural

12 Non-irrigated arable land Rain-fed1

13 Permanently irrigated land Irrigated2

14 Rice fields Rice

15 Vineyards Vineyard

16 Fruit trees and berry plantations Orchards

17 Olive groves Olive

19 Annual crops associated with Crop mixture

permanent crops
Forestry
22 Agro-forestry areas Dehesas

23 Broadleaved forest Broadleaves

24 Coniferous forest Conifers

25 Mixed forest Mixture

29 Transitional woodland-shrub Shrubs