Spatio-temporal assessment of biomass self-sufficiency in the European Union

Abstract

Growing concerns over the ecosystem degradation, climate change, loss in biodiversity and rapid depletion of natural resources have urged societies of developed countries all over the world to face the challenge of shifting from fossil-based to bio-based economies. Demand for biomass is growing, as biomass, apart for its primary uses for food and feed, is being increasingly used for production of bioproducts. The aim of this paper is to assess biomass self-sufficiency across EU countries. Past trends of biomass self-sufficiency in the EU based on domestic extraction - domestic consumption balance. Both the spatial and temporal variability of the self-sufficiency ratio are used to characterize the stability of capacity to satisfy own needs for biomass in the EU economy as a whole and at the level of individual member states. The findings indicate that the differences in biomass self-sufficiency ratios are quite high among the European Union member countries, i.e. in the range of 15% in Malta and 33% in Cyprus up to 184% in Estonia and 224% in Latvia (on average in 2016-2018). Positive and moderate correlation between biomass self-sufficiency ratio and biomass import dependency ratio was found.