Trends in land use in Spain and their meaning to bioenergy production

Abstract

The availability of land for biomass production has become a growing concern worldwide. Principles of sustainability indicate that the bioenergy chain, from biomass production to bioenergy end-uses, should be locally addressed. Thus, regardless of the possibilities that the international biomass trade could offer, each country should assess the size of the land resource that might be available for biomass production in order to establish realistic national targets for bioenergy. This work addresses two key challenges for bioenergy implementation: (i) 'Do we have land available to accommodate future biomass production?, (ii) 'What would be the choice of energy crops from the knowledge gained in field experiments?'. Focusing on Spain, an analysis of the evolution of land use is made and changes occurred in the last years are discussed to assess the size of land resource for bioenergy. Subsequently, the suitability of a selection of lignocellulosic energy crops is studied with a view to the potential available lands.