Landscapes

Section :

Characterisation of the field

Bioenergy has an important role to play in meeting the UK aspirations in renewable energy supply for 2010 and 2020. Energy from biomass is complicated since several feedstocks (e.g. dedicated bioenergy crops such as willow, or food crops such as rape, sugar beet and wheat) may be utilised in different conversion processes (combustion, fermentation, gasification) resulting in several energy outputs including heat, power and  liquid transport fuels (called here biofuels). It is important that this mixed portfolio of bioenergy supply is maintained at this time, ensuring the development of competitive and secure bioenergy and a firm research base for future large-scale deployments. Currently, including biogas from waste, bioenergy contributes more than 80 of all UK Renewable Energy (BERR, 2007)¹ with several large-scale commercial deployments already in progress including bioethanol production and the use of biomass in co-firing and dedicated combustion.

Deployment is being encouraged by a large number of Government incentives including Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) for co-firing, energy crop planting grants and capital programme incentives and these may extended further. Research to develop high yielding feedstocks and improvement of inefficient conversion processes and environmental sustainability is also developing, enabling us to identify clear short-term research priorities for the UK.

There are powerful, long-term environmental, political and economic drivers for the further development of the UK (and international) bioenergy sector. Bioenergy development in the UK has been impeded in the past largely by the persistent low cost of crude oil and associated policy and development barriers. The economic situation has undoubtedly changed and at $70 per barrel, many bioenergy operations begin to approach a commercial reality². We have entered a period of sustained high fossil oil prices, with a seemingly long-term upward trend and in the future a move towards a more ‘bio-based’ economy where bio-based products (including bioenergy) are seen to have a higher value. Much advanced research will be necessary to make this move to biofuels, bio-polymers and bio-oils as well as other products, over the next two decades3, within the appropriate framework of  environmental and economic sustainability.

Current emphasis on the use of food crops (first generation bioenergy crops) to generate bioethanol and biodiesel has highlighted the potential environmental costs and poor energy balance of these approaches^{13, 14} and these must be addressed through a move towards second generation perennial lignocellulosic and other more efficient systems and a reconsideration of biomass use for  heat and power compared to liquid biofuels.

Despite strong multilateral interests in bioenergy R&D within the UK, split broadly between the Government departments and the Research Councils (where EPSRC leads the energy portfolio), there are international investments across the full spectrum of research, and combined UK R&D activities must be considered to be lagging behind international leaders in this field. There is clear strategic vision in Europe through the EU⁴ and the United States^{5, 19,} which is being matched by considerable resource investments, not least at the biology end of the R&D spectrum, for example from the BP Energy Bioscience Institute now up and running in the USA¹⁸.

Land use will be a limiting factor for bioenergy in the UK. The Biomass Task Force¹¹ in a recent review concluded   that   a reasonable assumption for the UK would be up to 1 million hectares of UK land dedicated to specialist bioenergy crops by 2020, although in response, the UK Biomass Strategy believes 350,000 ha is more likely¹⁴, whilst a recent Europe wide study has suggested that the UK should move towards the use on 1.6 m hectares by 2030¹, but a requirement of 740,000 hectares is estimated as necessary to fulfil 50 of the RTFO   current targets for liquid transportation fuel. These land-use scenarios should be viewed with caution - they do not consider the large step-changes that may occur in biosciences and second generation crops over the coming decades. Although it is difficult to predict the prevailing socio-economic conditions we would point to three clearly identifiable drivers, each of which will increase the attraction of bioenergy deployment in the future.

Most importantly, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations will continue to rise well into this Century and the pressure for low-carbon energy solutions will grow as an aid to fulfil UK and EU targets of 60 on CO₂ emissions reduction. Alongside this there will be increasing global impact of climate change.

Secondly, declining fossil fuel reserves and concern over energy security and long-term high fossil fuel prices will drive R&D in renewable substitutes  for petrochemical.

Finally, land use competition will grow, making dual- or multi-use crops increasingly appealing. For example, a single crop may be grown for grain, which is harvested for food and then the remaining biomass is combusted for heat or fermented to bio-ethanol.

The research agenda must reflect this and currently is not well placed to develop integrated interdisciplinary research solutions. In this context the development of bio-refineries - based on the  model of petrochemical   refineries - where raw product (plant feedstock) enters and more than one refined product is generated (including heat and power), is a logical ambition for biorenewable petrochemical substitution². Even with this approach the UK will still require imports to fulfil even the current commitment to the Biofuels Directive (RTFO) for 5 by volume of liquid transportation fuels derived from biological sources by 2010, where progress  towards  these targets was reported  recently by the EU¹⁶.

A further factor that is likely to increase the economic favourability of bioenergy is the decentralisation of power generation through microgeneration (small combined heat and power units serving individual homes, businesses or communities). This will help to alleviate the need to transport biomass from point of production to large regional power stations. Microgeneration is currently a small contributor to the UK energy economy, but with careful development could become a very major one by 2030. No clear strategy currently exists in the UK to capture bioenergy from biomass ‘waste’ including municipal solid waste (MSW) and agricultural waste and this should be an important future priority and has been recently addressed in the UK Biomass Strategy^{8, 14}.

Considerable recent effort in the EU⁴ and USA⁵ has addressed the question of future research challenges within Bioenergy, with the publication of the Department of Energy Roadmap for biofuels⁵, recent roadmaps for lignocellulosic-to-bioethanol⁶ and the EU Biomass Action Plan⁹ and Biofuels in the European Union Vision for 2030¹⁰. In  general, it seems likely that over a timescale of 10-20 years and beyond, there will be a move from an ‘oil-based’ to a ‘bio-based’ economy where natural resources, particularly those from green plants, can be used more effectively. Many of these bio-processing routes are inefficient and still remain costly, both in necessary energy inputs and for environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas mitigation potential and other negative effects. Bioenergy from biomass can be considered a ‘low quality high volume’ bioresource, whilst bio-polymers, oils and other products may be considered as ‘high quality low volume’. The future long-term research challenge will be to optimise the biorefinery to ensure both types of output are possible, as appropriate.

In the longer-term, artificial photosynthetic systems, hydrogen from biomass and the use of microbial and other biological systems should be considered as having future potential. A  report of UK R and D priorities for current funding agencies in the UK was made in April 2007¹⁵, although this was focused mostly on short-to-medium term applied research requirements.

Short term Research Challenge (5 years)

• Quantify environmental impacts of bioenergy production systems using whole life cycle analysis tools
• Developing and assessing supply  chains  based on biorefining (bringing together biochemical and thermochemical processes)
• Improve the efficiency of bioethanol production at pre-processing, hydrolysis and fermentation steps, using biological research
• Improve deployment of CHP in the UK linked to microgeneration
• Identify optimum land-use strategies for the UK biomass resource and likely future use of arable, set-aside and marginal land in a changing climate with consequent impacts on  ecosystem services
• Develop and deliver new cultivars from past  and  current research and breeding of dedicated energy crops.
• Develop a UK strategy to capture energy from waste
• Improve public engagement in bioenergy decision making and understand public perceptions on use of GM technologies for bioenergy
• Assess the impact of bioenergy imports, including life-cycle analysis for both co-firing in power production and as raw and  finished material for liquid transportation fuels and commitments to RTFO.

Medium term Research Challenge (10 years)

• Improve total yield and develop new genotypes of a range of bioenergy crops, including oil seed crops, woody lignocellulose and grasses
• Improve understanding and manipulation of carbon partitioning in green plants
• Identify new and novel crops and microbes; identify newor  improved products and new bacteria/yeasts from genomic  research
• Develop technologies for second  generation biofuels, including woody and grass lignocellulose as feedstock and aviation fuels
• Understand advanced conversion routes including gasification of lignocellulosic resources

Long-term Research Challenge (20 years)

• Develop systems for large-scale production of second generation biofuels, advanced  conversion and deployment of biorefining complexes
• Develop novel artificial photosynthesis systems and other synthetic biology approaches for capturing solar energy
• Continue to improve feedstock quantity and quality, conversion efficiencies and environmental sustainability in a changing climate.

References

¹

BERR UK Energy Statistics 2007

²

The Path Forward for Biofuels and Biomaterials -- Ragauskas et al. 311 (5760): 484 -- Science

³

EPOBIO- Bioproducts from non-food crops

⁴

An EU strategy for Biofuels

⁵

Genomes to Life: Systems Biology For Energy and Environment

⁶

Breaking the biological barriers to cellulosic ethanol. A joint research agenda. A research roadmap resulting from the biomass to biofuels workshop, Dec 2005, published by DOE, June 2006.

⁸

Waste strategy for England 2007

⁹

EU Biomass Action plan

¹⁰

Report: Biofuels in the European Union - A Vision for 2030 and Beyond on the ManagEnergy Website

¹¹

Biomass Task Force, October 2005, Report to UK Government

¹²

Farrell AE, Plevin RJ, Turner BT, Jones AD, O Hare M, Kammen DM. 2006. 311, 506-508, Science

¹³

Rowe, R, Street NR and Taylor (2007). Identifying potential environmental impacts of large-scale deployment of dedicated bioenergy crops in the UK. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (in press)

¹⁴

UK Biomass Strategy, 2007

¹⁵

Bioenergy Funders Forum Research priorities 2007.

¹⁶

EU Biofuels Progress Report, 2007

¹⁷

How much bioenergy can Europe produce without harming the environment? - English - EEA

¹⁸

EBI BP Energy Bioscience Institute

¹⁹

DOE, USA Bioenergy Centres, 2007

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Table 2.1: UK Capabilities

Independent analysis suggests that the UK has research strength in basic bioscience and also in engineering, but these skills to date have not been fully applied to the bioenergy industry. They could provide valuable future capability to develop new engineering control systems linked to bioprocessing, but this still represents an unknown market for the UK. High level computing and systems biology will also be necessary for the industry to develop from a strong research base. The global biomass and bioenergy market is expanding rapidly and UK expertise could be deployed to benefit from these developments.

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Table 2.1: UK Capabilities

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Table 3.1: Research Funding | Table 3.2: Key Research Providers

Here we summarise the organisations funding basic and strategic applied research (Table 3.1) and follow this with a summary of the main UK research providers - mostly university groups and research institutes (Table 3.2).

University based bioenergy research covers basic bioscience, crop science, bioenergy policy, engineering solutions and both wet and dry biomass conversion and processing as well as socio-economic and environmental considerations for large-scale bioenergy deployment. An increased expertise in environmental impact is also apparent with emphasis on water resources and the GHG mitigation potential of different bioenergy chains and life cycle analysis (LCA), where they may be considerable overlap between several current projects and where UKERC is attempting to provide synthesis.

The dedicated UK bioenergy research community is small compared to the USA and other EU members and in general, in the past, bioenergy research was funded largely  from DEFRA and DTI and focused on crop science, feedstock supply, and technological innovations for combustion and conversion and whole-chain developments with some consideration of the environmental impacts of deployment. In contrast to many other nations, the UK has not previously developed a firm single-focus strategy for bioenergy -- identifying preferred feedstocks, land-use options, conversion pathways and end products, but rather has used directed strategic science to provide consistent support for Government Policy for maximised GHG mitigation and has thus focused on heat and power bioenergy, rather than liquid transportation fuels research. As a consequence, the liquid biofuels research area was until recently quite diffuse but in the long-term, this may be seen as advantageous, providing a flexible base from which to develop appropriate solutions. But for now, few university departments have large groups working together to address this interdisciplinary problem, however this is changing with major new funding initiatives being used to develop critical mass.

The Crop Improvement Networks funded by DEFRA are internationally competitive with involvement of BBSRC Institutes in partnership with universities including Southampton. Similarly research at Aston University on Pyrolysis and more recently in leading the SUPERGEN Biomass and Bioenery partnership and several other European activities is also central to UK expertise. The RELU projects on bioenergy and sustainability (coordinated by Rothamsted Research) and anaerobic digestion (coordinated by Southampton) and the TSEC-BIOSYS project (coordinated by Imperial College), add to UK critical mass. SUPERGEN II on Bioenergy and recent calls from BBSRC in Bioenergy (April 2007) and EPSRC on improving the efficiency of solar energy conversion (August 2007), add momentum in this area. The BBSRC call alone is valued at 20 million over 10 years providing a reasonable injection offunds for feedstock research. Glamorgan has a long-term interest and capability in biohydrogen production and in general the UK has extensive expertise in plant science but this has not been applied to bioenergy problems. Research on greenhouse gas mitigation potential at Aberdeen University forms part of several international projects. CEH has extensive experience of likely water use by bioenergy crops. Many groups may be working on bioenergy topics but if these are not core to their activity it may be difficult to identify all expertise and so care should be taken when interpreting the information below.

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Table 3.1: Research Funding

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Table 3.2: Key Research Providers

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Table 4.1: Research Funding | Table 4.2: Key Research Providers

This section gives details of the Applied Research Funders (Table 4.1) and those engaged in providing Applied Research (Table 4.2). Applied research on bioenergy in the UK is largely funded by DTI, DEFRA, The Carbon Trust with some input from other agencies including Forestry Commission

The DTI as part of the New and Renewables Energy Programme supported bioenergy research in the past through grants to business and research organisations with 50 matched funding projects. This focussed on equipment and feedstocks to ensure increased yield and efficiency in bioenergy production. Recently this scheme has been followed by the Technology Programme where the emphasis will be on low carbon technologies, particularly the biorefinery concept. In recent years The Carbon Trust has increased the funding to bioenergy projects through a mixture of smaller research grants and large directed initiatives, particularly the ‘Biomass Heat Accelerator’ programme to overcome barriers associated with bioenergy chains in the UK and to improve efficiency and is planning to fund a large Bioenergy project in the near future (2007). Applied bioenergy research is undertaken in the UK by a mixture of Government-funded departments and research organisations, particularly Forestry Commission, Forest Research, Rothamsted and IGER, with some additional input from a selected number of universities including partners in the Tyndall Centre. This is complemented by some industrial partners who through necessity in an emerging industry have committed resources to research. Several small companies are focussed on feedstock supply and management, such as TV Energy in the south of England. Engineering companies such as Talbott’s and other involved in large scale deployment are listed in section five, below.

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Table 4.1: Research Funding

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Table 4.2: Key Research Providers

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Table 5.1: Demonstration Funding Programmes | Table 5.2: Major Demonstration Projects

DTI supplies the largest source of development and demonstration funding. A new ‘Technology Programme’ was announced in April 2006 (see 4 above) and this should provide considerable funds for developments in bioenergy, subject to restrictions imposed by the responsive mode of funding. The ‘New Opportunities’ lottery fund has also funded several bioenergy projects within the Renewable Energy theme, within environment. Few demonstration projects in bioenergy are currently funded although those that are, tend to be from EU and pan-European programmes. Some DTI projects are listed here. Several commercial large-scale bioenergy projects are currently in development for deployment and these have been summarised here. This is a fast-moving area and new projects are likely to be forthcoming over the next few months and these tables should be interpreted with this in mind. They cover a range of end uses including liquid biodiesel and bioethanol as well as large scale biomass combustion facilities for heat and power. One of the largest uses of biomass currently in the UK is in the co-firing market where biomass is co-combusted with coal at power stations such as Drax and Didcot, providing ROCs to the company. It is estimated that approximately 1 million tonnes of dry biomass is utilised in this way each year currently and this amount is set to increase. Up to half of co-fired biomass imported.

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Table 5.1: Demonstration Funding Programmes

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Table 5.2: Major Demonstration Projects

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Table 6.1: Research Facilities and Assets

Many facilities exists at laboratory-level across the UK, for example, plant biology and microbiology facilities, CFD testing, pyrolysis, combustion, fermentation and other test facilities. Those are not listed here. Below is given a summary of UK-national resources that should have the highest priority for funding and maintenance since without them, UK research may in future be hindered and because these resources are utilised by many members of the research community.

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Table 6.1: Research Facilities and Assets

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Table 7.1: Networks

Numerous networks in bioenergy extant to the UK have developed in recent years and future effort should be focussed to ensure clear purpose for UK networks, avoiding unnecessary overlap and providing better integration.

The various public funders of bioenergy R&D work together through the Bioenergy Funders’ Forum to co-ordinate their research investments. The Forum was initiated by MAFF in 1999 and has been led by MAFF/Defra since. It conducted an analysis of requirements  in 2001, and this has formed the foundation of co-ordination since, particularly in relation to burden sharing between Defra, DTI and the Forestry Commission. This exercise has been repeated and published on the web in 2007. As such the BFF provides a very useful network for funders. UK Bioenergy networks to integrate findings have been limited and this could be considered a weakness, particularly given new consortium-based projects in Bioenergy within RELU, SUPERGEN and TSEC. SUPREGEN was the first consortium project to kick-off and as such has lead the way in developing a Bioenergy Forum British Bioenergy News which in future will be co-edited by TSEC and UKERC researchers. Within the BEGIN Genetics Improvement Programme, there is a stakeholder group that meets once each year, providing a forum for discussion between growers and researchers and in 2007, UKERC hosted the first Bioenergy UK Network meeting, which will hopefully be an annual event with wide participation. UK participation within European networks has been present but with only a very limited number of groups appearing in several networks. Current EU networks are shown below. EPOBIO represents an exciting new approach for an EU network with partnership with the USA. The focus of EPOBIO is on harnessing the economic potential of green plants for non-food crops. UK contributed to several sessions at the May 2006 EPOBIO workshop and this network is lead by the UK. The Renewable Energy Association (REA)acts as a network for industrial interests and organises an annual Bioenergy meeting for the industry.

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Table 7.1: Networks

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Table 8.1: EU Framework Programmes

UK participation in the EU Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Framework Programmes has been extensive with projects funded from Energy, Environment, Agriculture work programmes and encompassing coordinated actions, standard research projects, networks of excellence and human exchanges. Dry biomass rather than wet biomass has been the focus most projects in the past but recently there has been an increased interest in biomass for liquid biofuels within Framework Six. Within Framework seven, there is considerable emphasis on the biorefinery concept and on developing research to support liquid biofuels, particularly through biological conversion routes.

The BIOMAT-NET provides an extensive database of all FP V, VI, and VII bioenergy projects

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Table 8.1: EU Framework Programmes

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Table 9.1: International Activities

IEA acts as a focus for international collaboration in the complex area of bioenergy and consequently, 10 IEA tasks are in place for bioenergy, within the IEA Bioenergy implementing agreement. The UK has a good representation from several organisations including universities, private companies and DTI. The IEA networks provide a mechanism for the exchange of expert information and advice and have been of value to the UK in developing improved technical expertise in short rotation crops for bioenergy. The UK has current active participation in most of the IEA tasks. In addition to IEA, the International Poplar Genome Consortium has acted as a focus for developing genomic resources in poplar, including the full genome sequence and its relevance to both poplar and willow as bioenergy crops. The UK is part of the leadership of PYNE, the Biomass pyrolysis network. A new international network has been proposed by FAO, May 2006, (http://www.fao.org/sd/dim_en2/en2_060501_en.htm)and the Global Bioenergy Partnership was launched in 2007.

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Table 9.1: International Activities

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