Hybrid Life Cycle Assessment of Wood-based Biofuel Production and Consumption Scenarios in Norway

Abstract

An increasingly urgent need to develop alternatives to fossil fuels in road trans- portation stems from both the need to combat climate change and the need to prepare for a transition beyond peak oil. Biofuels can be part of an al- ternative solution to both. In Norway, the boreal forest o®ers a considerable resource base, and emerging technologies may soon make it commercially vi- able to convert these resources into low-carbon biofuels. Therefore, it is critical that policy-makers are provided with the knowledge needed to make informed decisions regarding the environmentally sustainable production of wood-based biofuels in Norway over near- and mid-term time horizons. A combined supply-demand resource assessment was performed to map the resource base and to quantify the wood-based bioenergy potential in Norway. A set of selected conversion technologies were chosen and evaluated for a series of scenarios addressing the utilization of woody-biomass resources through each of the systems. An integrated economic input-output LCA approach was taken to perform biofuel production-consumption scenario analyses in Norway up to 2050 in e®orts to quantify climate change mitigation and fossil displacement potentials. It was found that a growing resource base, when used to produce second generation biofuels, can displace anywhere from 35-50% of fossils used in land transport which can warrant signi¯cant AGW mitigation potential both from within road transport and other key sectors.