Residential heating using woody biomass in Germany – supply, demand, and spatial implications
Syrbe Ralf-Uwe^1*, Tran Thuc Hân¹, Xiao Suili¹, Wende Wolfgang^1
1 Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) Dresden, Germany
*r.syrbe@ioer.de

The critical aspect of a transition to low-carbon economy is that it requires significant amount of land to grow biomaterials for renewable energy. Forest accounts for one third of German territory. The paper balances holistic assessments of land demand for biomass heating and their ecosystem services. It is predicted that biomass will continue to play an important role in heating sector by 2050 in Germany as it is one way to increase the use of renewable energy and reduce CO₂ emissions. However, low-carbon energy requires more land than the non-renewable resources. The trade-off between wood fuel and carbon sequestration is critical in the context of the climate-change. For a sound balancing, calculations of wood fuel substitution have to include also hidden emissions. It is also important to ensure that substituting fossil fuels by wood fuel does not result in loosing biodiversity, natural forest and agricultural land. Hence, further research and better assessments are needed to investigate in this area to provide holistic solutions how to best use of woody biomass for heating within available land and to reduce emissions at the same time. Based on the regarded types of fuel demand, the need for space in terms of growing area is characterized as the corresponding land under consideration of a given land-use type. For pellets, a share of agricultural and forestry (waste-wood) areas are calculated. For wood chips, the land demand is regarded by a share of typical short rotation coppices and forestry areas. For solid wood logs, the forestry area as share with timber depending on the predominant tree type is indicated. The formulas have been applied for the federal level in Germany.

renewable energy,land demand,wood fuel,carbon sequestration,ecosystem services