Cost of ligno-cellulosic biomass production for bioenergy: A review in 45 countries

Abstract

Energy generation from biomass is a promising alternative to fossil fuels since biomass resources are available in most parts of the world and offer great flexibility through their capacity for use in different forms of energy carriers. However, its cost-competitiveness remains difficult to assess due to the large variability of bioenergy costs, to which the cost of biomass feedstock contributes disproportionately. To address this issue, this paper evaluates the production cost of primary energy production from ligno-cellulosic biomass based on a literature review covering 106 references in academic and grey literature from 45 countries. Our data relate to five types of ligno-cellulosic biomass: managed forest, wood energy crops, grass energy crops, agricultural residues and forest residues. Our results provide insight into the variability of feedstock costs within and between biomass types. We found that the cost of residues from forestry and agriculture is significantly lower than the other biomass types. We did not find any significant difference between the cost of grass energy crops, wood energy crops and managed forest. Biomass grown in Europe is significantly more expensive than in other regions, while biomass grown in Latin America is significantly cheaper.