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