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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Dendromass4Europe (Securing Sustainable Dendromass Production with Poplar Plantations in European Rural Areas)

Teaser

Summary

To achieve the ambitious goals of the European Union with regard to sustainable use of resources and rural development (cf. Bioeconomy Strategy 2012/2018), it needs more sustainably produced biomass from agricultural and forest resources. An increased amount of biomass must become easily available from Europeâ€™s own resources. To avoid competition with agricultural food production, the potentials of unused land should be unlocked for sustainable intensification of biomass cropping. Parallel, the successful development of bio-based products must be promoted to ensure the sustainable utilisation of biomaterials and the income opportunities for the bio-based society, especially for the rural population. Dendromass4Europe (D4EU) will demonstrate that the European bio-based industries can tap a reliable basis for the wood supply with tailored wood and bark biomass (= dendromass) from non-forestry sources.
D4EU aims at establishing sustainable, short rotation coppice (SRC)-based regional cropping systems for agricultural dendromass on marginal land that feed into bio-based value chains and create additional job opportunities in rural areas. For that purpose, 2,500 ha of short rotation poplar plantations will be established, including marginal or currently unused land in rural areas around a large wood processing plant in Central Europe. These plantations will provide the feedstock for the establishment of four new bio-based value chains based upon products from wood and bark of poplar trees: (1) a functionally adapted lightweight board, (2) eco-fungicidal moulded fibre parts, (3) a bark-enriched wood-plastic composite and (4) a multi-purpose wood-plastic composite granulate.

Work performed

All work packages, communication pathways and management mechanisms have successfully been launched. The partners are collaborating in a unique project environment since the D4EU consortium combines expertise from industrial and academic partners in all relevant fields along the value chain from the field to bio-based products. The legal and conceptual basis for SRC operations includes the preparation of contracting agricultural land which is currently not in use, underutilized, marginal or located in rural disadvantaged areas. This is very important for D4EU as the access for SRC to agricultural land under the given societal, legal and structural conditions in the EU is challenging. The responsible partner has successfully responded with the maximum possible effort for land acquisition.
For achieving an economically reliable raw material price, the availability of specific machinery on the European service provider market for different harvesting technologies for poplar plantations is a precondition. European-scale field trials in collaboration with external plantation operators and machine providers were organized. The complex of the harvesting and inbound supply chains includes also the log storage. Using poplar wood purchased from external suppliers, storage piles have been tested under different treatments. Trials on the separation of the wood from the bark have successfully been carried out.
Applied-level research has been established on schedule. For the Environmental Impact Assessment, EIA, the faunistic and floristic field investigations were started. Recording tree growth and planting success is the basis for operational decisions and for yield and growth modelling. The tree growth measurements have been started according to a specified strategy. Of similar importance is the soil and site evaluation to identify the suitability of land potentially available.
In the target region, spring drought results in a certain risk for the establishment of the SRC plantations. Hence, greenhouse trials have been designed to test rooting and early establishment ability of different poplar clones under dry conditions. For the operational plantation monitoring, a database was created. It is accessible for all partners and it allows controlling all the field activities. High planting material quality is an important precondition, and a systematic quality assessment has been established.
All three industrial project partners are planning to add value to the poplar wood or bark. They carried out trials for preparing the production of their specific New Bio-Based Materials (NBBM). A Life Cycle Assessment (ISO 14044-series) will be carried out in the later project phase. In addition, investigating the acceptance of the SRC crops land owners and the public is part of the system under study. With a focus on the land use activities and their socio-economic assessment, research was started for the LCA.
Specific dissemination and communication activities have been started to reach different stakeholder groups. Prominent examples are the launch of the project website in three languages and of different social media accounts. The collaboration with D4EUâ€™s External Advisory Board has been created to foster knowledge exchange with project-internal and -external institutions.
The coordinating partner has ensured a smooth implementation and execution of the project. An appropriate management structure has been implemented. Among the related tasks, a thorough self-assessment of all aspects of ethics requirements was continued in the project phase.

Final results

The D4EU consortium has built a bridge over the gap between the evidence-based knowledge about the ecological advantages that SRC crops have over the classical agricultural biomass crops and the implementation of large scale SRC supply systems into a sustainable industrial bio-economy.
Part of the planned plantations have been successfully established in the project area that provides confidence that the final plantation area of 2,500 ha will be reached. The changing Central European climatic conditions in the vegetation periods did not have any catastrophic impact on the SRC fields yet. The established SRCs have already started unfolding their positive effects on both the agricultural environment and the rural economy in West Slovakia. With the related land contracts and field operations, the local economy is having a benefit for its further development. With the plantation management, the respective farmers and land owners in rural western Slovakia will get access to a new bio-based market of three industrial partners. Based on the impact of D4EU plantations for the farmersâ€™ income, new primary agricultural jobs will be created, mainly for rural citizens. New green jobs in rural areas will also originate from the D4EU at the production plants of the industrial partners.
The entire consortium is highly motivated and is working collaboratively towards the optimum success of the project D4EU. The establishment of the four new bio-based value chains is part of the later project phase because it requires the availability of harvested raw materials on an industrial scale. The need and the potentials for a substantially improved sustainability in biomass cropping in the EU, like it is demonstrated by D4EUâ€™s dendromass crops, shall be illustrated with the photo below.