What is it about?
We identify and evaluate the potential of marginal lands in Italy to produce sizeable amounts of biomass for sustainable cellulosic biofuel production while limiting land use conflicts and negative ecological impacts.
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Why is it important?
The European Union aims to provide as much as one quarter of its transportation fuels via biofuels derived from renewable sources by 2030. To put this into perspective, the Italian government has recently established an ambitious goal to support the wider uptake of advanced second-generation biofuels, including cellulosic biofuels for the transportation sector. A sustainable way forward is to grow perennial biomass crops on marginal lands, however the nationwide availability of those lands for lignocellulosic feedstock production remains uncertain.
Perspectives
Our results showed that planting cellulosic biofuel feedstocks on these marginal lands may fulfill 7.8–69.1% of current national liquid transportation fuel consumption, thus limiting potential land use conflicts with conventional crops without affecting areas designated for nature conservation. In this perspective, land-use conflicts should be better investigated, considering, e.g., trade-offs of bioenergy crop land-use with the environmental potential of marginal lands for forest cover
Piermaria Corona
CREA Research Centre for Forestry and Wood
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Evaluating the potential of marginal lands available for sustainable cellulosic biofuel production in Italy, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, August 2022, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.seps.2022.101309.
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