BIOENERGY FOR EUROPE: WHICH ONES FIT BEST?

80 5 Socio-economic and political analyses
III Political factors
For a description of the major political aspects concerning biofuels, information has been collected from
literature and policy documents on the following:
• Future land claims: One condition for growing energy crops is that in 2010 part of the agricultural
area is not needed for food production anymore. There are many land use potentials other than energy
crops. In some European areas there is a large pressure on land, in others land abandonment
may occur. Agricultural policy is one of the main factors.
• Alternative energy sources: Bioenergy is one of the possible alternatives for fossil energy sources.
Information is gathered on the forces and policies that promote the use of the biofuels investigated in
this study, and those which promote the use of other alternative energy sources (e.g. wind, solar, nuclear).
As the information obtained is qualitative and thoroughness differs between the participating countries,
the political factors in Chapter 5.4 are discussed qualitatively.
5.2 Socio-economic aspects
5.2.1 Production costs
Total production costs of energy crops consist of the sum of the costs of farm activities, transport, preconversion,
conversion, logistics and end-use. The quality of the collected data sets differs for some
biofuels considerably between the countries. Major differences may be attributed to differences in:
• data sources: measured values versus estimates;
• year of reference;
• availability of data;
• inconsistencies (e. g. implausible values).
The unexplained variation was in particular large for the phases behind the farm gate. Therefore, this
chapter only shows the costs of the farming phase. An overview of these costs in the participating countries
is given in Tables 5-1 and 5-2.
Table 5-1 Production costs of biofuels at farm level (€/ha yr)
Austria Denmark France Germany Greece Italy Nether- Switzer-
lands land
Triticale 925 791 575 650
Rape seed 798 806 669 811 2,098
Sunflower 697 691 920
Sugar beet 998 1,073 2,134
Hemp 1,581
Miscanthus 1,294 639 540 883
Willow 649 464 910
Wheat
straw
147 13 157 29 15
Wood logs 907 575 1,203
Reference:
Fallow 446 404 383 365 266 563 1,023 1,503
In Table 5-1 (costs per ha) large differences between countries can be seen, except for triticale. Apart
from possible inconsistencies in the data, several reasons can be found. To start with, land prices differ
very much between the countries. During cultivation, differences in the production costs for the same
crop result from differences in cultivation practices. For instance, in Italy and Greece no sowing is practised
on fallow land, whereas seed costs in Switzerland are very high (439 Euro/ha/yr). Another exam-