COMPARISON OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY OF THREE EXISTING BIOENERGY CHAINS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

摘要

The Pilot Project "Enhancement of agroforestry biomass in Tuscany: Limits and Opportunities"rndeveloped in the Enermed project for the regional government of Tuscany entails assessing the environmentalrnsustainability of those sectors considered as the most representative of the chain of energy production from biomassrnin Tuscany. Estimates were carried out to examine the exploitation of biomass that is already available in the area,rnsuch as compounds of agricultural production, forestry activities, animal husbandry, agro-industry and thernprimary processing of wood, and secondly, the possibility of introducing dedicated energy crops in the region. Thernsustainability of these chains was assessed by comparing their environmental performance in terms of energy usernindexes, land use and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions compared with the fossil reference using the Life CyclernAssessment (LCA) methodology, adopted also by the European Commission to evaluate the sustainability of biofuelsrn(EC, 2009). The chosen reference unit for all three studies is one kWh of electricity produced by a plant of 1 MW fedrninto the national grid, excluding the energy consumed by the power plant itself.