AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

European Union is in search of identifying international sourcing countries to import biomass for bioenergy purposes, while ensuring sustainability constraints at present but also until 2030. Under the scope of addressing this challenge, Kenya is a case study selected to investigate its biomass potentials that stem from herbaceous, woody and lignocellulosic biomass and subsequently assess their suitability for export to the EU for the time being and by 2030. This goal was realized primarily through an internship conducted in Kenya, where the most promising feedstocks and the counties where these (feedstocks) were present in terms of residues availability were identified and selected for further scrutiny. In fact, the selected counties were used as case studies in order to determine domestic demand and other important parameters (e.g. farming practices, technological adoption) which were in turn applied to the remainder counties where the selected feedstocks were being produced. Thus, regarding the present situation in Kenya the technical, the sustainable and finally the sustainable feedstock surplus potential for each feedstock was estimated on a county level and subsequently summed up to reach conclusions regarding Kenya's total biomass potential. Accordingly, the costs and GHG emissions induced throughout the entire biomass supply chain were assessed and a discussion on the share of the national sustainable feedstock surplus potential meeting sustainability criteria was provided. With the view to estimating possible future ranges of the total sustainable feedstock surplus potential in Kenya two scenarios (BAU and Optimistic) were devised providing a sensitivity analysis with a moderate and a more optimistic situation under different assumptions for 2020 and 2030. Timber sawdust and off-cuts & chips, coconut husk, sugarcane residues, sisal bogas & ball, rice husk & straw, coffee husk & pulp were the feedstocks identified for further analysis. The analysis of the data of this research led to the conclusion that the total available biomass potential emanating from herbaceous and woody biomass, when considering domestic demand and sustainability constraints, ranges between: • 30 to 60 PJ → In a short term; • 33 to 93 PJ → In a medium term. No biomass potential from energy crops cultivation was found to contribute to the final results. Subsequently, through a cost and a GHG emissions analysis the entire amount of biomass delivered to the main port for exportation at present was estimated at 9 €/GJ and 6 kg CO2/GJ, while for 2020 and 2030 the respective total amount under the two scenarios will deliver 7 €/GJ, and more than 90 per cent at 5 kg CO2/GJ. With regard to land availability for energy crops cultivation, due to the woody biomass deficit (10.3 million m3), the high pressure on land use from the agriculture and the livestock sector, and the inaccessibility of the remote arid areas no potential was found. This situation was predicted to remain the same until 2030 due to unfavorable trends of key parameters related…