Modelling the regional biomass supply with EFEM (Economic Farm Emission Model)

The bottom-up model EFEM has been used to simulate agricultural production on micro- (farm) and meso- (regional) levels for Baden-Württemberg (BW). It is a supply model based on static linear programming (LP). The prices for producers and production costs as well as capacities for typical farms are exogenously determined.

Two new interfaces were developed during the project. On the one hand, an iterative coupling with the techno-economic site optimization model BiOLoCaTe (Biomass value chain Integrated Optimization for Location, Capacity, and Technology planning) was created. Thus, answers were found to several questions regarding potential sites of conversion plants for agricultural biomass in Baden-Württemberg.

On the other hand, an interface was developed to the agricultural model ESIM (European Simulation Model) for providing EFEM with the necessary exogenous factors such as prices and quantity changes for the modelled scenarios.

During the project, different scenarios of the bioeconomy in 2030 and 2050 were analyzed: intermediate development = BIO_mid, strong development = Bio_hi, strong development plus reduction of meat consumption = BIO_hi+diet.

These scenarios resulted in impacts on land use in Baden-Württemberg, notably through the expansion of the cultivation area used for perennial crops producing lignocellulose for energy and material use, such as Miscanthus and Short Rotation Coppice (SRC). As an example, Figure 1 shows the spatial distribution of the modelled cultivation of Miscanthus/SRC in Baden-Württemberg. This shows that the cultivation of perennial crops, especially in arable regions such as the Unterland/Gäue (VGG1), would be highly competitive. In contrast, however, these plants would hardly be cultivated in the typical forage production regions, i.e. the Black Forest (8VGG3) or the Allgäu (VGG5). Here, the scarce arable land would still be used for arable forage cropping