Biotrade1: international trade in renewable energy from biomass

Abstract

This paper discusses international trade in renewable energy from biomass. Main objective is to compare options for international trade in energy from biomass and to compare these options with non-trade options like domestic use of biomass and afforestation. Aspects that are taken into account are costs, macroeconomic effects (i.e. changes in GDP and national employment), energy balance and environmental effects. Several cases are analysed: in all cases the importing country is the Netherlands. Exporting countries are Sweden, Estonia and Ecuador. In each country several biomass sources available for export are considered like forestry residues and energy crops. In addition several transport routes are studied like shipment of unprepared biomass, upgraded biomass or biofuels and international transport of the biomass as electricity. Research so far concerns the import of Swedish energy from biomass by the Netherlands. Five chains that all result in the delivery of electricity to the Netherlands have been analysed. General conclusions are that the total costs are lowest when the biomass is imported as electricity and that for all chains the macro-economic effects are larger in Sweden than in the Netherlands. Compared to the current costs of electricity in the Netherlands, the electricity from biomass imported from Sweden is expensive.