BIORESOURCE - Increasing the biomass resource, its quality and sustainability

A large share of the increased renewable energy production stipulated in Danish and EU policies is expected to come from bioenergy. Increasing the use of biomass in our energy system requires improvements of both the biological interface between solar energy and biomass and of the technical interface between biomass and energy services. BIORESOURCE challenges the perception that the biomass resource for food and energy is a static value. Our hypothesis is that by increasing the photosynthetic fixation of solar energy, minimizing energy loss during biomass production, and optimizing the conversion into energy carriers, the energy production and CO2-mitigation can be doubled per unit land area. By employing perennial crops an increased biomass yield can be achieved whilst environmental impacts are reduced. We will 1: select high-productive and stress-tolerant genotypes by high throughput screening. 2: utilise the longer growing season in a warmer climate by crops with an indeterminate growth. 3: harvest and store whole crops with leaves. 4: optimise the use of biomass for fuel (ethanol), heat, power and feed production via a biorefinery concept. Food production is sustained by developing innovative, sustainable and cost-efficient biomass production systems for marginal agricultural land that currently are difficult to cultivate or are environmentally sensitive. Whole crops will be stored as silage, and will be physically and chemically characterised to facilitate modelling of its convertibility into ethanol. This will be verified through tests in lab and by pilot-scale experiments. Bioenergy value chains will be developed and optimised for society’s energy service needs. BIORESOURCE includes the internationally leading group at EBI, US on biological solar energy conversion into energy carriers.