European Union

Among European countries, the bulk of biomass being used consists of fuelwood for individual domestic heating. The use of biomass for district heating is substantial in a few countries such as Austria, Finland, and Sweden, mainly fed by fuelwood and wood residues from the forestry and wood processing industry. In Denmark, straw is used to some extent. In comparison, the use of biomass in industry and for electricity generation is modest. In addition, biofuels in transportation applications represent a small fraction of the bioenergy use in all countries including Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden (Bauen 2005).

At present, markets for bioenergy exist for co-firing with coal, district and small-scale heating, combined heat and power, and blending of biofuels with petroleum transportation fuels. Long-term options could be biomass use for heat and power generation in integrated gasification combined-cycle plants and for the production of new fuels such as hydrogen.

Biomass offers the largest renewable energy potential in the European Union today, although it only currently supplies 3.5% of the energy in the region. However, the interest in bioenergy has increased rapidly in the region. Some EU countries have had outstanding performance in their national biomass programs, for example, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Denmark, all of which started from very low levels in the early 1990s. Also, countries previously outside the EU, such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, have been investing in bioenergy (IEA 2003). Meanwhile, traditional bioenergy users such as Sweden, Finland, and Austria continue to expand their bioenergy generation.

In the past few years, the EU has developed common guidelines and energy directives which are expected to have a significant impact on bioenergy use in the coming years. Provided the efforts being made to promote bioenergy succeed, the amount could increase from 45 million tons of oil equivalent (TOE) to 130 million TOE in the region by 2010-2015 (Bauen 2005).

Bioenergy provides a great opportunity to address problems other than energy in the EU, such as decreasing populations in rural areas, employment in peripheral regions, and restructuring of agricultural policies including new uses for idle croplands and reduction of subsidies. A recent Europe-wide study indicated that as many as 900,000 jobs could be created by 2020 from investments in renewables of which 500,000 jobs would be related to agriculture production of  biofuels (ALTENER 2001).