Sustainable Biomass Production and Use - Lessons Learned from the Netherlands Programe on Sustainable Biomass (NPSB) 2009-2013

The Netherlands Programme Sustainable Biomass (NPSB) was developed to gain experience in the production and certification of sustainable, based on practicalexperiences. The NPSB programme has run from 2008 to the end of 2013. During its run,the programme has clustered knowledge from the biomass project portfolio and filled theknowledge gaps with supplementary research.

The project portfolio consisted of projects from the Global Sustainable Biomass tenders (DBM projects), from the Sustainable Biomass Import tenders (the DBI projects) and of several relevant projects from the Daey Ouwens Fund.

The objective is to give a compilation of the overall lessons learned from the NPSB programme to promotethe sustainable production of biomass for export and local use. Key findings and results of 40 projects and 30 assignments for additional research are presented.

Resource assessments indicate untapped biomass potentials from residues and waste in countries such as Indonesia or Vietnam. The use of industrial processing residues such as rice husk in Indonesia or bagasse in Colombia has been promising and it provides perspectives for replication. Also,other waste streams have been successfully identified such as POME, coffee wastewater and discarded transport pallets. This valorisation and more efficient use of waste and residues is still underutilized but seems to offer opportunities for meeting the demand in bioenergy. Future estimates, as for the Ukraine and Mozambique, show a considerable biomass potential.

Assessments of available land in Mozambique for 2030 for bioenergy production range between 6.4 and 16.5 million ha in 2030. In developing countries especially there is still a considerable yield gap because of inefficiencies in agriculture. The bioenergy sector can possibly contribute to bridging this gap, especially when a transition is made to upscaling.

Reaching the full technical potential in agriculture and forestry requires considerable efforts and investments to enhance productivities. These efforts should be integrated in a region's rural development and land use to optimize benefits. Projects, such as Inbio and the bamboo project in Colombia, successfully used resource assessment as a screening tool to identify biomass opportunities in a country. Theoretical resource assessments do not generally consider discounting factors as applicability, sustainability, land rights, etc. This results in a gap between the amount of biomass that is theoretically available and the biomass that is practically available on the ground, as was experienced by the Mozambique project.

Commodity-based biomass resources have been developed and are traded internationally in large volumes.The soy project in Argentina  and the sugarc ane project in Brazil teach us that utilizing these resources can start within a short timeframe in a cost-efficient manner. Production is available and infrastructure is well developed. Main focus for these crops should be on promoting sustainable production models, especially in expansion areas, as was the case for the NPSB projects.

Alternative, yet unexploited, resources for bioenergy production are available. The projects succeeded in growing fast-growing grasses such as reeds, bamboo and switchgrass. Their potential is promising, especially for use on marginal lands. Biomass has also successfully been produced from alternative crops such as cassava as well as from agroforestry systems. Only parts of these crops are harvested for biomass production so as not to harm food production and to create multiple benefits.

A charcoal tool has been developed under the NPSB program that presents alternative feedstocks, and their selection criteria, for charcoal use for local markets.

Developing alternative biomass resources is challenging and requires additional effort and time comparedto running business as usual. Quickly emerging promising crops such as Jatropha, as well as the disappointing results of several of the Jatropha projects, have shown the importance to have adequate risk management and to perform thorough assessments (e.g. on economics) on project development and investments. This is to avoid compromises on the longer term.