Woody biofuel production from short rotation coppice in Italy: Environmental-impact assessment of different species and crop management

Short Rotation Coppices (SRC) can be a suitable solution for the production of biomass, mainly due to the easy-to-harvest good-quality feedstock. Besides technical, social and economic aspects, environmental issues are important to be taken into account when developing SRC. Although some studies focused on environmental sustainability of SRC were carried out only few compare different arboreous species using primary data. In this study, the environmental evaluation of SRC plantations carried out with 14 poplar and 6 willow clones was performed using primary data collected during experimental field tests over 12 years. Twelve impact potentials were evaluated using the characterization factors reported by the ILCD method: climate change (CC), ozone depletion (OD), Human toxicity, cancer effects (HTc), Human toxicity, non-cancer effects (HT), particulate matter (PM), photochemical ozone formation (POF), acidi- fication (TA), freshwater eutrophication (FE), terrestrial eutrophication (TE), marine eutrophication (ME), freshwater ecotoxicity (FEx) and mineral, fossil and renewable resource depletion (MFRD). Both for poplar and for willow, among the different clones the environmental performance greatly vary mainly due to the yield. The choice of the most productive clones involves a reduction of the environmental impact of the produced biomass of about 35% (respect to the average results both for poplar and willow). However, biofuel production from willow SRC achieves lower environmental burdens respect to poplar SRC considering both the average biomass yield and the most productive clones.