BeWhere Alps at IEW 2014

The Alps are expected to significantly increase its production of bio-energy in regards with the targets set with the European Union by the year 2020. But the Alps are a region with a very fragile ecosystem and planning for further bio-energy development must take into account the impact on the ecosystem. The bio-energy potential in the Alps has been estimated by the linkage of two models: the Global Forest Model (G4M) that determines growth of forest, and the BeWhere model that determines optimal location of combined heat and power plants. The former one presents two scenarios of forestry growth with emphasis on the carbon sequestration, and maximizing the biomass output from the forest. Those results were used in the BeWhere model to identify the bio-energy potential in the Alps for combined heat and power (CHP) plants. It came out that a forest management increasing the carbon sequestration in the forest lead to a much out-spread outtake of the raw material for the same bio-energy production as a maximum forest output scenario. And the highest potential of heat and power production will be reached when the trades of raw material between the Alpine countries are allowed, and subsidies are in place to facilitate the set-up of lower CHP plants or the fossil fuel price increases by tenfold.

Last edited: 12 June 2014