Changing Focus on Bioenergy through Resource Circulation

Abstract

Over the last couple of decades, bioenergy has been under intense scrutiny, having significant research and business interests in European countries, while in India and a few other countries, the efforts have been overserved through last decade. Both production and consumption of bioenergy have been increasing steadily over the past two decades because of lower environmental concern and cost-effectiveness. Bioenergy utilising biomass has been considered a very important process of resource circulation and implementation of circular economy concepts, encouraging sustainable practices. Generation of methane (the simplest hydrocarbon) by anaerobic decomposition of organic maters has been known to humankind since 17th century. We describe here the main challenges and policy issues and provide policy recommendations for globally scaling up sustainable bioenergy approaches. The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) defined under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21) need to reach global greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets of 2°C. Sustainable biomass production and resource circulation can make a significant contribution, which has been evident in many bioenergy-cropping systems. This can bring multiple benefits and offset environmental problems associated with fossil-fuel usage, as well as intensive food production and urbanisation. This study focuses on how the concept of resource circulation in the areas of biomass utilisation converted to bioenergy in European countries, as the world leader, and in India, the largest democracy in the world.