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The aim of this report is to demonstrate and evaluate the potential of tall wheatgrass (Elytrigia elongata) to avoid GHG emissions and obtain lower economic costs in marginal areas of Spain. Our research built scenarios based on experimental plots (2 and 3 years growth) in 3 locations of Spain with completely different climate conditions (provinces of Girona, Soria and Palencia). In our experiences, we achieved an adequate establishment and biomass production, and assumed a rank of biomass yields until the end of the life cycle that is usually accepted to be about 15 years in many other studies in United States, Argentina and Eastern Europe where tall wheatgrass is extensively cultivated in marginal areas for sheep livestock production. Using our experimental plots and statistical information for economic inputs costs, we built 5 different scenarios per region considering a large range of biomass yields of tall wheatgrass. The analysis included a comparison with annual grasses economic costs calculated for a wide range of biomass yields of a previous study. We estimated GHG emissions savings for tall wheatgrasses and used our previous study (which had GHG emissions savings as well). Savings were calculated replacing natural gas electricity with electricity from biomass combustion in real power plants in Spain. In a wide range of yields, the results suggest that marginal areas might present a better performance with tall wheatgrass compared to annual winter grasses (cereals whole plant cuttings), thus producing biomass yields with higher GHG savings and lower economic costs at the farm level. Proceedings of the 20th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 18-22 June 2012, Milan, Italy, pp. 217-229

It is recognised that several constraints such as the lack of knowledge and expertise of farmers, land users and policy makers concerning agroforestry systems establishment and management hamper the adoption of agroforestry systems (Camilli et al. 2017). AFINET project acts at EU level in order to direct research results into practice and promote innovative ideas to face challenges and solve practitioners' problems. AFINET proposes an innovative methodology based on the creation of a European Interregional Network, linking different Regional Agroforestry Innovation Networks (RAINs). RAINs represent different climatic, geographical, social and cultural conditions and enclose a balanced representation of the key actors with complementary types of expertise (farmers, policy makers, advisory services, extension services, etc.). The Italian RAIN is focused on the Extra-Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) value chain, with the main aim to promote agroforestry management of local olive orchards. Olive trees are still managed traditionally, often in marginal sites, with minimal mechanization and relatively low external inputs such as chemical treatments in comparison to other crops. The presence of permanent crops (olive trees) guarantees a partially tree cover reducing hydrogeological risk. Soil management usually keeps natural grassing reducing soil carbon emission and increasing soil fertility (Bateni et al. 2017). Intercropping with cereals and/or fodder legumes and livestock can also be practiced in olive orchards, increasing the complexity of the olive tree multifunctional system. Moreover, olive orchards can be managed as agroforestry systems since they can be intercropped with arable crops (cereals, legumes) and/or combined with livestock (sheep, poultry). The RAIN process, involving local stakeholders, highlighted the main bottlenecks of the EVOO value chain related to communication and dissemination of knowledge, technical and management aspects, market and policy. In order to contrast bottlenecks and exploit opportunities of the olive oil supply chain, the identified innovations are: i) adoption of best practices: testing and experimenting innovative agroforestry systems introducing different crop/animals species and varieties; ii) improve the management of the olive orchards: encouraging and increasing the organic production; iii) valorisation of olive processing residues: identifying and testing innovative products (bio-materials, olive paste as example); iv) arise the awareness among consumers: educating people about the benefits of olive oil consumption, creating networks among stakeholders, improving marketing and commercialization. Creating a Bio-district, defined as a geographical area where farmers, citizens, tourist operators, associations and public authorities enter into an agreement for the sustainable management of local resources, emerged a powerful tool to implement the innovation in the local EVOO value chain.

Introduction The European Union aims at raising the share of energy consumption produced from renewable resources to 20% in 2020 as compared to 1990. Moreover, the European Commission adopted a strategy called "Innovating for Sustainable Growth: a Bioeconomy for Europe" to shift the European economy towards greater and more sustainable use of renewable resources. The S2Biom project (www.s2biom.eu) - Delivery of sustainable supply of non-food biomass to support a "resource-efficient" Bioeconomy in Europe - supports the sustainable delivery of non-food biomass feedstock at local, regional and pan-European levels through developing strategies and roadmaps that will be render available to the user by a "computerized and easy to use" toolset (and respective databases) with updated harmonized datasets at local, regional, national and pan-European level for EU-28, Western Balkans, Moldova, Turkey and Ukraine. Methodology Taking in consideration the results and experiences of current and past EU projects, the S2Biom project activities are implemented in three individual but strongly interrelated Themes: 1) To focus on methodological approaches, data collection and estimation of sustainable biomass potentials resources, efficient pathways and optimal logistical supply routes as well as the development of a computerised toolset. 2) To make use of the findings of Theme 1 and develop a Vision, strategies and a R&D roadmap for sustainable delivery of non-food biomass feedstock at local, regional and pan- European levels. 3) To validate the results from themes 1 and 2 and ensure the project outreach; this will be performed through selected case studies which will efficiently capture the different scales of applications for biomass supply chains in a sufficient number of regions across Europe. Conclusion The first draft version of this toolset have been developed, allowing to analyse different levels of bioenergy production, its costs and feedstock biomass crops available across EU at a resolution level of Nuts3.

The energy crop sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) is raising considerable interest as a source of either fermentable free sugars or lignocellulosic feedstock with the potential to produce fuel, food, feed and a variety of other products. Sweet sorghum is a C4 plant with many potential advantages, including high water, nitrogen and radiation use efficiency, broad agro-ecological adaptation as well as a rich genetic diversity for useful traits. For developing countries sweet sorghum provides opportunities for the simultaneous production of food and bioenergy (e.g. bio-ethanol), thereby contributing to improved food security as well as increased access to affordable and renewable energy sources. In temperate regions (e.g. in Europe) sweet sorghum is seen as promising crop for the production of raw material for 2nd generation bio-ethanol. The project SWEETFUEL (Sweet Sorghum: An alternative energy crop) is supported by the European Commission in the 7th Framework Programme to exploit the advantages of sweet sorghum as potential energy crop for bio-ethanol production. Thereby, the main objective of SWEETFUEL is to optimize yields in temperate and semi-arid regions by genetic enhancement and the improvement of cultural and harvest practices. Proceedings of the 18th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 3-7 May 2010, Lyon, France, pp. 200-206

The Joint Research Center (JRC) has set a series of thresholds to define marginal lands in terms of biophysical constraints. We focus on climate limitation given by the ratio between precipitations and potential evapotranspiration (P/PET). Indeed, the Mediterranean climates are characterized by long drought periods during summer, with low rainfall and high evapotranspiration, what limits plant CO2 assimilation and biomass production, particularly of spring-summer crops. The present study ascertained the potential and actual yield of African fodder cane (Saccharum spontaneum ssp. aegypticum), a perennial, herbaceous, rhizomatous perennial grass, native from North Africa and widespread in South Mediterranean regions. Saccharum was grown under different water regimes (I0 - rainfed, I50 – 50% ETm and I100 – 100% ETm restoration) for six successive growing seasons, namely from the 7th to the 12th. Throughout the experimental period, the dryness index greatly changed among the six growing seasons: three out of the six (2012, 2013 and 2014) were much lower than the threshold of 0.6 set in the JRC report, indicating severe drought seasons, two were quite similar to the threshold value (2015 and 2016), while the 2011, which was the wettest season overall, had a dryness index higher than the threshold. Actual biomass yield was mostly driven by meteorological conditions through the growing seasons. However, even in the driest seasons, Saccharum was able to maintain satisfactory biomass yield and good yield persistence. As compared to the potential yield (I100), the relative yield reduction over the six years was in the range of 31% in the most stress condition (I0), but the energy productivity and the water footprint improved by 62% and 32%, respectively, indicating a higher sustainability of the cropping system when irrigation water was not provided. When the irrigation level was raised to the 50% of the maximum evapotranspiration restoration (ETm), the relative yield, over the six growing seasons, reduced by 16.5%; the energy productivity and the water footprint improved of only 14 and 22%, respectively. This study underlines the importance for strategic selection of crops for a given environmental condition dominated by a specific biophysical constraint and the agronomic practices leading to increase the energy productivity while reducing the pressure on Mediterranean freshwater. Proceedings of the 28th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-9 July 2020, Virtual, pp. 34-40

This thesis presents a methodology for energy management in large companies and its implementation through a web application and through a prototype of a simulation platform. By combining existing tools in an innovative manner and by making use of recent web technology developments, the methodology adopted provides engineers and managers with tools capable of guaranteeing an efficient and sustainable energy management. Although the methodology presented in this work is based on the experience acquired in the food industry, it can be easily applied in other industrial sectors. The methodology is based on two fundamental approaches commonly used to analyse energy consumption in industrial contexts: the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach. The top-down approach is used in the first place to identify the factories and the specific areas within the factories in which the largest improvement potentials can be achieved. In turn, the bottom-up approach builds on the results from the top-down approach to identify and quantify the energy saving potentials. The top-down approach is implemented through a web application in collaboration with an industrial partner. This application encompasses a modular factory model –accessible to engineers in factories through a user-friendly interface– which enables each factory to define its energy usage, allocate energy costs among the different energy consumers and compute key performance indicators. For a rational cost allocation in multi-service energy conversion units, an exergy-based methodology is presented. The efficiency of energy conversion units defined in the factory model, such as the boilerhouse or the air heaters, is assessed using thermodynamic models. The latter are simplified parametric models derived from accurate thermodynamic models developed in a general flow-sheeting and simulation software to comply with computation time and reliability requirements of the web application. The different factory models defined in the web application can be browsed as part of the proposed top-down approach: starting from a high level overview of the factory –targeted mainly at managers– users can then focus on a specific area of the factory. Strategies are developed to guide users in identifying factories or specific areas within the factories with the largest improvement potentials. They include the use of mechanism to rate the quality of a performance indicator as well as a benchmarking module that allows to compare performance indicators across factories worldwide. In sum, the modular and adaptive aspects of the web application guarantee its long-lasting use. In order to quantify energy saving potentials in the energy conversion units defined in a factory model, "what if?" scenarios are performed in a web-based simulation platform prototype developed in this thesis. This platform acts as a decision-support tool by providing graphical representations of profitability and risk analysis. The platform can be accessed by human users through a web browser while other applications, such as the web application described above, may use the simulation functions through a web service. Statistical tools that can help engineers in defining the factory model described above are also presented. They are used to correlate energy consumption with factors such as production volumes or the climate. Tests to validate the developed correlations are also described. The application of this technique in a factory shows that more than 50% of the energy consumption does not have a direct correlation with production factors and allows to identify improvement potentials. Finally, the concept of a bottom-up approach to identify and quantify energy saving potentials in the different production processes of a factory is presented. A triple representation of the requirements of a process is introduced and applied to process integration in a concrete example. The 80/20 rule is also applied to reduce the complexity of the problem. The optimal integration of cogeneration engines and heat pumps using multi-objective optimisation is also presented.

The perspective of climate change requires an analysis of the adaptation possibilities of species currently cultivated. A powerful tool for adaptation is the relevant intra-specific biodiversity of crops. The knowledge, for different cultivars, of the responses to environmental conditions (e.g. yield response functions to water regime) can be a tool to identify options for adaptation to future climate. Models of crop response to environmental forcing might be used for this purpose, but this approach is severely constrained by the scarce knowledge on variety-specific values of model parameters, thus limiting the evaluation of intra-specific biodiversity towards adaptation. We have developed an approach towards this objective that relies on two complementary elements. A database on climatic requirements of durum wheat varieties: the yield response functions to water availability were determined from scientific literature. These functions were applied to describe the behaviour of the cultivars with respect to the soil water availability; the simulations performed by the agro-hydrological model SWAP (soil-water-plant and atmosphere), to describe the future soil water regime at landscape scale. The case-study presented here shows how the yield response of durum wheat cultivars to soil water availability can be defined by means of variety-specific threshold values of evapotranspiration deficit. The soil water regime calculated by the model is compared with the threshold values to identify varieties compatible with expected climate. The operation is repeated for a set of realizations of each climate scenario. This analysis is performed for three soils. The selected study area is a hilly region of about 40,000 ha in Southern Italy (Fortore Beneventano, Campania Region). Future climate scenarios in the area were generated within the Italian National Project AGROSCENARI. Climate scenarios at low spatial resolution generated with general circulation models (AOGCM) were downscaled by means of a statistical model. The downscaled climate scenario includes 50 realizations of daily minimum, maximum temperature and precipitation data, on a regular grid with a spatial resolution of 35 km, for the 2021-2050 period. The downscaled climate scenario was further refined by using the hydrological model which describes the soil water regime in three soils. Soil water content and evapotranspiration deficit was determined for the 50 realizations of the daily time series, taking into account the three soils, and was compared with threshold values to evaluate cultivar' adaptability to the predicted future climate. The case study shows how, in the future climate scenario, the intra-specific variability will allow to maintain the current crop production system.

A wide range of legumes is traditionally used in Mediterranean regions,owing to the extreme variability of environmental conditions and farming systems. Annual forage legumes are cultivated as hort-term forage crops, usually in mixture with cereals or grasses. Selfreseeding annual legumes are sown to improve permanent pastures in extensive agro-pastoral systems. Breeding programs are carried out on alfalfa to select varieties with high tolerance to summer drought,grazing, and attitude, to grow in mixtures with summer dormant perennial grasses.Other perennial legumes are also under study for their flexible utilization. Nonetheless, some critical aspects concern the legume seed production in Mediterranean Europe and the rhizobia-legume symbiosis.

Non-food biomass production has developed significantly in the latest decades to meet the needs of the bio-economy, and should expand in the future. Concerns around the consequences on land-use prompted a surge in scientific publications over the past 10 years. Attributing LUC to biomass production and ultimately the rising demand for its end-products (eg, biofuels) requires the elicitation of mechanisms relating feedstock production to land use or management changes, and their impacts on the environment. They may be analysed as a three-step causal chain starting with the identification of factors driving feedstock production, the assessment of LUC occurring in response to this demand, and the associated environmental impacts. A key question is whether or not the inclusion of LUC effects in this balance may negate their potential benefits over fossile-based products. Here we surveyed the scientific literature on LUC in general between 1975 and 2014, and retrieved a body of about 240 references which were analysed in details in terms of scope, LUC types, methodologies employed, and overall outcomes. Liquid biofuels accounted for 75% of the bio-based end-products analysed, the remaining 25% being dominated by combustion applications and a marginal contribution of biomaterials and chemicals. The predominant types of LUC included the conversion of annual crops or grassland to perennial crops and grassland to annual crops, followed by the conversion of forests. Although it was difficult to separate between direct and indirect LUC, it was surprising to note that the majority of these changes (60%) occurred in Europe and North America, whereas South America only accounted for 19% of those. In terms of methodologies economic and biophysical models dominated for LUC assessment, and so did life-cycle assessment for the environmental impacts. However, a large fraction of studies relied on much simpler methods. The emissions of greenhouse gases was the first impact category studied, while the impact on biodiversity was rarely evaluated (only 5% of the articles dealt with it), as was the impact on air quality or human health. Overall, the substitution of fossile fuels by biofuels was deemed beneficial even when factoring in LUC effects, but a significant fraction of the studies concluded to the opposite, or to variable outcomes depending on the characteristics of the bio-based value-chain assessed. Some clear-cut trends emerged, such an adverse impact of biomass development on biodiversity or an increase in water consumption. Establishing perennial species presented a more favorable profile than other types of feedstocks. There is a need to widen the scope of LUC studies beyond liquid biofuels, to assess multiple criteria simultaneously, and to improve and harmonize the assessment methodologies. Proceedings of the 25th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 12-15 June 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 1471-1475