Biomass energy and societies in the South

There are high hopes for bioenergies. However, devoting agriculture to producing such forms of energy raises risks for developing countries if it is practised at the expense of food production. The aim is thus to design sustainable biomass production systems tailored to the situation of rural communities, for whom access to energy is still a problem, to develop ways of using lignocellulose biomass–wood and crop residues–to generate energy, and to look into the agronomic potential of several plants, such as jatropha, cotton, groundnut, soybean, sorghum and sugarcane.

What sort of biomass for what sort of energy: forest trees, sugarcane, cereals, oil crops, or what?

  • Adapting and optimizing existing production systems to produce energy (for instance woody forest species) or for a dual purpose (for instance sugarcane), so as to boost regional potential.
  • Creating new production systems devoted to bioenergy, for instance including jatropha, a tropical shrub from which oil can be extracted.
  • Including bioenergy production in the list of criteria for varietal breeding and improvement operations: eucalyptus, oil palm, sugarcane, sorghum.

How can bioenergy production be combined with food production without competing with it?

  • Analysing environmental impacts and ecological services.
  • Building integrated management tools and methods, combining socio-economic and technical approaches.
  • Studying impacts on food production and markets, on common resource management conflicts, and on social and economic development.

What are the most effective and least polluting ways of converting biomass into energy of use to development?

  • Developing and adapting efficient, environmentally friendly biomass energy conversion processes (thermochemical or fermentation processes).
  • Saving energy throughout the chain: agricultural practices, postharvest techniques, integrated systems.
  • Assessing the economic, social and environmental impact of using crop residues, by-products and processing waste to generate energy.
Update date: 19/11/2009