Renewable Energy Production from Energy Crops and Agricultural Residues

Dear Colleagues,

We are inviting submissions to a Special Issue of the journal Energies on the topic of “Renewable Energy Production from Energy Crops and Agricultural Residues”.

Biomass represents an important source of renewable and sustainable mean for energy production. Its increasing consumption is mainly related to the increase in global energy demand and fossil fuel prices, but also to a lower environmental impact compared to non-renewable fuels, also taking into consideration the RED II directives. In the past, forestry interventions were the main supply source of biomass, but in recent decades, two others sources have entered the international scene. These are dedicated energy crops and agricultural residues, which are nowadays important sources of biomass for biofuel and bioenergy. We will consider four main value chains below.

• Oil crops. Oil production from non-food oilseed crops (such as camelina, Crambe, safflower, castor, cuphea, cardoon, etc.), oil extraction, and oil utilization for fuel production;
• Lignocellulosic crops. Biomass production from perennial grasses (miscanthus, giant reed, switchgrass, reed canary grass, etc.), woody crops (willow, poplar, Robinia, eucalyptus, etc.), and agricultural residues (pruning, maize cob, maize stalks, wheat chaff, sugar cane straw, etc.), considering two main transformation systems:
  1. Electricity/heat production
  2. Second-generation ethanol production
• Carbohydrate crops (cereals, sweet sorghum, sugar beets, sugar cane, etc.) for ethanol production;
• Fermentable crops (maize, barley, triticale, Sudan grass, sorghum, etc.) and agricultural residues (chaff, maize stalks and cob, fruit and vegetable waste, etc.) for production of biogas and/or biomethane.

Energy production from the mentioned above sources is a multistage process where only a well-structured assessment of all the phases—from energy crop production techniques; both energy crop and agricultural residue harvesting, handling, pretreatment, and transport to transformation plants; and transformation systems tailored for these biomasses—can lead to a virtuous value chain with positive externalities concerning all three pillars of sustainability (economy, environment, and society).

This Special Issue would like to encourage original contributions regarding recent developments and ideas in energy production from energy crops and agricultural residues. Potential topics include but are not limited to comparison of different harvesting systems, logistic efficiency assessment, analysis of biomass quality, biofuel development processes, biomass chain logistic, and socioeconomic implications.

Dr. Luigi Pari
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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