The Economics of Biomass-to-Liquids Fuels

摘要

To combat the climate change and for reasons of the security of supply the European Union and its member states have adopted a strategy to increase the use of energy from renewable resources until 2020 and beyond. One long run sub-target of this strategy is to increase the proportion of renewable energy for fuelling purposes to 20 percent. This ambitious is not reachable with current technology. The paper discusses alternative forms of renewable energy. This discussion identifies biomass-to-liquid (BtL) fuels as the most promising way to accomplish the target. The evaluation of the future role of BtL is difficult due to complex and uncertain interdependencies between factors of influence. The paper develops the basic structure of a SD-model to capture the numerous effects and their dynamic feedbacks.