The European Union (EU) uses biomass to meet its needs for food and feed, energy, and materials. The demand and supply of biomass have environmental, social, and economic impacts. Understanding biomass supply, demand, costs, and their associated impacts is particularly important for relevant EU policy areas, to facilitate solid and evidence-based policymaking.
As the European Commission’s (EC) in-house science service, the role of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) is to provide EU policies with independent, evidence-based, scientific and technical support throughout the whole policy cycle, thereby contributing to coherent policies. To provide a sound scientific basis for well-prepared EC policy making, the JRC was requested by Commission services to periodically provide data, processed information, models, and analysis on EU and global biomass supply and demand and its sustainability. This report is the 3rd public-facing report under this mandate.