CAN BIOMASS PRODUCTION ON URBAN BROWNFIELDS BE A VIABLE CONCEPT?

摘要

Growing conflicts in land use, food production and nature conservation in terms of increasing energyrncrop production arise. Therefore it is essential to develop alternative land resources, such as urban brownfields,rnconsidered as every previously used and now unused area. The main focus is the investigation of options to producernbiomass on urban brownfields for energy recovery, assuming that there is no foreseeable demand for a certainrnunused, idle site or its reuse would be unprofitable. In particular this approach contributes to provide bioenergyrnsources in a local context close to the consumer, to implement a sustainable development with improvement of urbanrnsites and it reduces our dependency on fossil fuels. It has been demonstrated with this research project that biomassrnproduction for energy recovery on brownfields has a reasonable potential for the – at least temporary – use ofrnbrownfields in cities and urban regions, especially if there have been prepared regional or municipal energy supplyrnconcepts. Even temporary biomass production will contribute to an initial use, as sites will be optically upgraded andrneconomically improved and site management costs will be partly reduced. Demonstration projects will be a goodrnopportunity to verify the potential, along with public relations to communicate the experiences.