About the initiative

The BIOTEAM project goals are to:

• Assess the sustainability performance (or impact) of a number of (existing and planned) bio-energy pathways (six countries).
• Check the relevance of alternative (non-energy) use pathways for the biomass-to-energy pathways, so as to verify if there is a low-high likelihood of conflicting alternative biomass uses.
• Contribute to the advancement in the knowledge and understanding of public and private stakeholders about the unknown impacts of policy frameworks and market system dynamics on the allocation of and sustainable use of biomass resources.
• Propose - in collaboration with public and private stakeholders – a series of actions that promote the sustainable use of scarce biomass resources that strike an optimum balance between economic, social and environmental interests and impacts.

The ability of a society to utilize its biomass resources in a sustainable manner is largely determined by its ability to manage the market systems and policy frameworks that influence the behaviour of the many individual stakeholders involved in cultivating, processing, converting and using biomass resources.

Biomass is a highly diverse and versatile commodity that can be used for various purposes (e.g. food, feed, energy). This natural resource is becoming increasingly scarce partly as a result of population growth, and partly as a result of non-sustainable conduct.

“There is a need to optimize or promote the most sustainable use of biomass possible within any given (unique) context. This requires regional societies and local communities to find a meaningful balance between the economic, social and environmental interests and impacts that any given biomass use could have.

The various social, economic and environmental policy instruments that have been (and will be) introduced to regulate the behaviour of market stakeholders in the field of biomass has resulted in a comprehensive, complex and sometimes interacting European and national policy framework.

The allocation of biomass resources throughout the economy is a result of the combined strategic behaviour and day-to-day interactions of individual stakeholders (e.g. biomass producers, distributors and end-users) in biomass market systems.The BIOTEAM project aims to assess the impact that market forces and policy instruments have on the sustainable use of biomass resources. Both market forces (market systems) and policy decisions and actions (policy framework) have been known to influence the strategic and operational behaviour of actors active in the biomass markets. As such these two factors have a strong impact not only on the economic, but also the social and environmental performance of biomass-usage pathways. Knowing that many market systems have a tendency to operate predominantly in a mode of economic optimization, there is a need to strike a new balance with social and environmental aspects/interests, so as to optimize the sustainability performance of biomass usage systems, with a primary focus on biomass-to-energy pathways.