Appendix 1
Title page -- ENFA
SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME
PRIORITY [#]
[PRIORITY TITLE]
Contract for:
SPECIFIC SUPPORT ACTION
Annex I - “Description of Work”
Project acronym: ENFA
Project full title: EUROPEAN NON-FOOD AGRICULTURE
Proposal/Contract no.: 6581 ENFA
Related to other Contract no.: (to be completed by Commission)
Date of preparation of Annex I: 23-May-200723 April 2009
Operative commencement date of contract: (to be completed by Commission)
Contents
B.1Project Summary
B.2Participating Institutes
B.3Participating Main Researchers
B.4Objectives of the proposed project
B.4.1The Problem
B.4.2General Objective
B.4.3Partial Objectives
B.5Relevance to the objectives of the X Priority
B.5.1Scientific Support for Community Policy Formulation and Implementation
B.5.2Research Integration across Europe
B.5.3European Biofuel Taxation Proposal
B.5.4Common Agricultural Policy Reform
B.5.4.1Rural community objectives
B.5.4.2Non-food biomass strategies in CEEC member states
B.6Potential impact
B.6.1Contribution to standards
B.6.2Contribution to policy development
B.6.3Benefits to the European society
B.6.4Added Value of European Project Scale
B.7The consortium and project resources
B.7.1The ENFA team and resources
B.7.2Management level description of resources and budget
B.7.2.1Hamburg University (UHH, 1)
B.7.2.2Utrecht University (UUTR, 2)
B.7.2.3Trinity College, Dublin (TCD, 3)
B.7.2.4Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER, 4)
B.7.2.5A&F Wageningen (A&F, 5)
B.7.2.6Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå (SLU1,61)
B.7.2.7Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala (SLU2,62)
B.7.2.8EC Baltic Renewable Energy Centre (EBREC,7)
B.7.2.9University Hohenheim (UHOH,8)
B.7.2.10Agricultural University of Athens (AUA,91,92)
B.7.2.11Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria (JR,10)
B.7.2.12French Institute for Agronomy Research (INRA,11)
B.7.2.13Obersteiner Consulting Engineers (OCE,12)
B.7.2.14University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU,13)
B.7.3Integration of previous EU non-food related research projects
B.8Project management
B.8.1Project interaction
B.8.2Plan for using and disseminating knowledge
B.8.2.1Workshop plan
B.8.2.2Publications
B.8.3Raising public participation and awareness
B.9Workplan for ENFA
B.9.1Introduction
B.9.2The ENFA model
B.9.3Overall Project Logic
B.9.3.1Integration by non-food product line
B.9.3.2Integration by ENFA task
B.9.4Work Package Synopsis
B.9.4.1Engineering and Microeconomic Analysis of Non-food Production Lines
B.9.4.2Miscanthus and switchgrass related product chains – Utrecht University, A&F Wageningen, Dublin University
B.9.4.3Short rotation woody crops – Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
B.9.4.4Reed Canary Grass as energy crop in Sweden - Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
B.9.4.5Magdalena Rogulska – Bioenergy systems in Poland
B.9.4.6Annual fibre crop systems: hemp and flax (and kenaf)
B.9.4.7Bioethanol and Biodiesel – Hohenheim University
B.9.4.8Field level environmental impacts of food and non-food product crops – University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna
B.9.5Energy and GHG balances
B.9.5.1Forest sector opportunities – Obersteiner Consulting Engineers (OCE)
B.9.5.2Agricultural food production systems
B.9.6ENFA model building
B.9.6.1ENFA model structure and data integration
B.9.6.2ENFA Model validation and calibration (UHH)
B.9.6.3Policy scenario analysis
References
B.9.7WP description (full duration of project) – Project Management
B.9.8WP description (full duration of project) – Workshop Plan
B.9.9WP description (full duration of project) – Internet
B.9.10WP description (full duration of project) – Project Outputs
WP description (full duration of project) – Miscanthus/Switchgrass Systems
B.9.11WP description (Full duration of project) – Red Canary Grass Systems
B.9.12WP description (Full duration of project) – Swedish willow systems
B.9.13WP description (Full duration of project) – Polish Renewable Energy Systems
B.9.14WP description (full duration of project) – Bioethanol and biodiesel
B.9.15WP description (full duration of project) – Annual fibre crop systems
B.9.16WP description (full duration of project) – Arundo, Cynara, Miscanthus, Switchgrass, Poplar and Eucalyptus Systems
B.9.17WP description (full duration of project) – Environmental Field Impacts with EPIC
B.9.18WP description (Full duration of project) – Energy and Greenhouse Gas Balances
B.9.19WP description (full duration of project) – Food Sector Module
B.9.20WP description (full duration of project) – ENFA Dynamics
B.9.21WP description (full duration of project) – Forest Sector Module
B.9.22WP description (full duration of project) – ENFA Model Development
B.9.23WP description (full duration of project) – Policy Scenario Analysis
B.10WP list (full duration of project)
B.11Deliverables list (full duration of project) – Sorted by Number
B.12Deliverables list (full duration of project) – Sorted by delivery date
B.13Financial information – whole duration of the project
B.14Cost break down per reporting period
B.15Other issues
B.1Project Summary
The ENFA project will establish a dynamic agricultural and forest sector model for the integrated economic and environmental assessment of non-food alternatives in European agriculture and forestry. This tool will be used to analyze market and environmental impacts from the adoption of non-food strategies. Market impacts include supply potentials for agricultural non-food product lines under alternative policy and technology scenarios, supply, price, and trade effects for traditional agricultural and forestry products, and measures of rural community change such as changes in farm welfare, labour demand, and land values. Environmental impact estimates will include measures of emissions pertaining to greenhouse gases, soil erosion, and nutrient leaching as well as biodiversity impacts. To achieve its objectives, the ENFA project will integrate engineering science and micro economic analysis for major non-food production lines with traditional agricultural and forest sector analysis across Europe. The proposed analysis will be intensively linked to many completed and ongoing European research projects and will join leading research institutes in the non-food arena.
B.2Participating Institutes
ID / Institute / Acronym / Start Date / End Date1 / Hamburg University, Germany / UHH / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
2 / UtrechtUniversity, the Netherlands / UUTR / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
3 / The Provost, Fellows and Scholars of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth, near Dublin, Ireland / TCD / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
4 / Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, Aberystywth, United Kingdom / IGER / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
5 / A&F Wageningen, the Netherlands / A&F / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
6 / SwedishUniversity of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå / SLU / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
7 / Instytut Budownictwa, Mechanizacji i Elektryfikacji Rolnictwa (Institute for Building, Mechanization and Electrification in Agriculture), Warszawa, Poland[1] / IBMER / 1-May-2005 / 31-December 2005
8 / University of Hohenheim, Germany / UHOH / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
9 / Agricultural University of Athens, Greece / AUA / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
10 / Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria / JR / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
11 / French Institute National de la Recherché Agronomique, Thiverval-Grignon, France / INRA / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
12 / Obersteiner Consulting Engineers, Austria / OCE / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
13 / University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria / BOKU / 1-May-2005 / 30-April 2008
14 / Instytut Paliw i Energii Odnawialnej (Institute for Fuels and Renewable Energy), Warszawa, Poland1 / IPiEO / 1-January-2006 / 30-April 2008
B.3Participating Main Researchers
ID / Name / Institute Acronym / Email / Fax1 / Uwe Schneider / UHH / / +49(0)428387009
2 / Iris Lewandowski / UUTR / / +31(0)302537601
3 / Mike Jones / TCD / / +353(0)16081147
4 / John Clifton-Brown / IGER / / +44(0)1970820212
5 / Wolter Elbersen / A&F / / +31(0)317475347
61 / Håkan Örberg / SLU / / +46(0)907869494
62 / Martin Weih / SLU / / +46(0)18673440
7 / Magdalena Rogulska / IBMER / / +48(0)226466850
8 / Jürgen Zeddies / UHOH / / +49(0)7114593709
91 / Petros Soldatos / AUA / / +30(0)2105294776
92 / Stelios Rozakis / AUA / / +30(0)2105294776
10 / Bernhard Schlamadinger / JR / bernhard.schlamadinger @joanneum.at / +43(0)31687691340
11 / Stephane de Cara / INRA / / +33(0)130815368
12 / Michael Obersteiner / OCE / / +43(0)2236807366
13 / Erwin Schmid / BOKU / / +43(0)1476543653
14 / Magdalena Rogulska / IPiEO / / +48(0)225100220
All of above / Email list /
B.4Objectives of the proposed project
B.4.1The Problem
Previously well-funded research projects have contributed to the development of renewable product technologies and identified their technical potentials. However, independent private market implementation of renewable non-food product lines has been extremely limited. The current situation is considered sub-optimal for several reasons. First, society is reaped of the often-claimed environmental benefits from renewable products. Second, because the current situation implies that there are little fruits from the extensive EU research funding in the non-food arena. Third, upcoming international environmental agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol may partially depend on adoption of renewable product and energy strategies. Fourth, adoption of renewable non-food product lines is crucial to achieve some of the EU’s internal policy objectives such as the strive towards more sustainability
B.4.2General Objective
The general objective of the ENFA project is an integrative assessment of the competitive economic potentials of major non-food options in the forest and agricultural sector of the European Union through a new modelling tool, hereafter called ENFA model. The competitive economic market potential represents the likely market adoption of a technology with full cost accounting and full competition. Full competition implies that an available technology is only used if all other available technologies are economically inferior. The competitive economic potential, which integrates engineering science, micro-, and macroeconomic analysis, is the best possible indicator for the market implementation probability of non-food strategies. Market impacts will be jointly evaluated with impacts on the environment and on rural communities.
B.4.3Partial Objectives
Non-food product technologies will be assessed. Existing research information will be appended by filling regional holes and assessing additional environmental impacts. Available non-food technologies will be described in a consistent manner, which allows integration into the ENFA model.
The ENFA modelling tool will combine both traditional (mainly related to food) and alternative (mainly related to non-food) management choices in the agricultural and forestry sectors with promising non-food options.
The ENFA model will contain several key features
- The traditional agricultural sector is completely represented across the EU through representative production technologies for major traditional products
- Active agricultural policies will be integrated
- Major non-food opportunities are implemented simultaneously across the EU
- Product prices for traditional agricultural products and production levels for both traditional and renewable products will be endogenous
- Non-food industrial products will face industrial demand curve
- ENFA can solve for the market equilibrium subject to various policy and/or technology scenarios
- Technological coefficients, resource endowments, demand and supply function parameters can be easily updated. The model can be easily expanded to cover new technologies and new regions
- It will be dynamic welfare optimisation model
To find the competitive economic potential of non-food opportunities, it is very important to include traditional food production technologies and traditional agricultural markets. Profit expectations from traditional agricultural and forest production impose opportunity costs for alternative non-food production lines. For a non-food production line to be implemented, it is not enough to return satisfactory net profits. The non-food production line to be implemented must be superior to all other alternatives. For example, a miscanthus – electricity production line having a positive expected net return of 100 Euro per ha will not be implemented unless all other available strategies (for example a wheat production line) have lower net returns.
Opportunity costs are not constant. As market prices adjust, opportunity costs change. Simply speaking, as more agricultural and forestland is devoted to non-food production lines, traditional agricultural production levels decrease, and market prices for traditional products increase. However, as prices for traditional products increase so do expected net returns for and opportunity costs from traditional agricultural strategies. Thus, non-food production lines may become more expensive as implementation of these production lines increases. The ENFA model will fully capture the described market adjustments after non-food adoption including production, prices, and trade impacts for agricultural and forest commodities, welfare of farmers and foresters, and aggregated resource requirements.
Alternative non-food production lines differ across space and time. In some regions, certain production lines may have a higher economic potential because some regional settings may result in higher net returns or because opportunity costs are lower. The ENFA analysis will use an appropriate regional and temporal resolution to capture economic and environmental heterogeneity across space and time. The agricultural sectors of all current EU countries and Poland will be integrated. ENFA will be structured to allow easy coverage of more countries, i.e. candidate countries as data become available. Because European agriculture is not isolated from the rest of the world, trade relationships with important non-European regions will be integrated for major agricultural products.
Adoption of non-food production lines affects the environment and rural communities. The ENFA project will examine major aspects of these impacts. Environmental assessments will involve impacts on greenhouse gas emission, bio-diversity, water quality, and soil erosion from selected non-food options. Rural community impacts assessed through ENFA comprise changes in farm welfare, labour demand, and land values. In assessing environmental and rural community impacts, attention will be paid to regional differences.
ENFA will contribute to policy development. The consortium members in dialogue with the Commission will jointly determine reasonable policy scenarios. The impacts of these policy scenarios will be assessed with ENFA model and important findings will made available to the Commission and to other parties of interest.
B.5Relevance to the objectives of the X Priority
B.5.1Scientific Support for Community Policy Formulation and Implementation
The overall objective of policy-oriented research under the 6th framework is “… to support the formulation and implementation of Community policies, by providing scientific contributions to policies that are targeted precisely on needs (“demand-driven”), coherent across the various Community policy areas, and sensitive to changes in policies as they take place.” This objective is a principal outcome of the proposed ENFA project. The proposed modelling tool will integrate numerous scientific results from European research projects to build a modelling tool, which can be used to assess the impact of current and potential Community policies. The nature of the Community policy scenarios will be open to dialogue between the ENFA consortium members and members of the Commission.
B.5.2Research Integration across Europe
The ENFA project brings together researchers from more than more than ten independent European research teams, covering 6 EU member states and one candidate state. In addition, the proposed research utilizes results from numerous past European wide research projects and links to many ongoing research projects. The information developed through ENFA will in turn be available to future European research projects and will also strengthen the European network on Global Change Research.
B.5.3European Biofuel Taxation Proposal
The European biofuel taxation proposal was put in place to reduce the European Union’s dependency on foreign supply for oil, to contribute to the achievement of the European Union’s greenhouse gases emission reduction objective as decided in Kyoto, and to meet the objective of substituting 20 percent of traditional fuels by alternative fuels in the road transport sector by 2020. The proposed ENFA model provides an excellent tool to assess opportunities and challenges in bringing forward the objectives of the biofuel taxation proposal. Particularly, renewable fuels such as bioethanol and biodiesel)
B.5.4Common Agricultural Policy Reform
Four years ago, Agenda 2000 was decided in an effort to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Major EU objectives of this reform are the replacement of direct price support measures with direct payments and the implementation of a consistent rural policy. The ENFA project will not only integrate current agricultural policies but also probable policy changes in the near future. The dynamic nature of the ENFA model allows to adequately represent this shifting process and to examine its consequences.
B.5.4.1Rural community objectives
Rural development is a major policy objective within Agenda 2000 and within the 6th Framework. Two important measures of rural development are employment opportunities and standard of living in rural areas. The ENFA project will assess labour demand impacts and farm income shifts from non-food production opportunities. These impacts will be regionally differentiated. Thus, ENFA will analyze where communities benefit the most and where benefits are limited or negative. Rural community aspects will also play a role for the development of reasonable policy scenarios.
B.5.4.2Non-food biomass strategies in CEEC member states
The ongoing expansion of the EU and inclusion of Central and Eastern Europe Countries (CEEC) in the agricultural as well as energy policies of the EU creates potential difficulties as well as opportunities. Rationalization of current agriculture in CEEC is likely, leading to high productivity and economic performance, but also loss of employment and abandonment of land. Large-scale biomass production for energy and material purposes could meet a multitude of goals: 1. Increased employment and useful use of (agricultural) land is maintained, 2. The production of renewable (biomass) energy in Europe is increased and this could be done at low cost levels, 3. (Potential) export of sustainable energy carriers (liquid biofuels, surplus power and raw or pre-treated biomass) to Western Europe could become feasible, thus creating a new market and business across Europe.Several Central and East European countries - like Poland, Rumania, etc. – are characterized by: huge land resources, comparatively low labour and agricultural production costs and relatively low agricultural productivity compared to Western Europe. Therefore, East European countries could substantially contribute to meet EU’s Kyoto commitments of reducing CO2 emissions by supplying biofuels to the European market. If this concept proves feasible, a major new market could emerge with potentially large positive impacts on total bio-energy production in Europe.
Generation of information with high relevance for agricultural and energy policy:
The project will generate results which are important for the development of strategies to support the implementation of non-food options by political measures. The developed model is a tool to ‘play’ through different strategies and show their options and consequences.
B.6Potential impact
B.6.1Contribution to standards
The proposed analysis will result in the development or improvement of environmental standards for non-food production lines. These standards will be derived from the application of the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model, life cycle analyses (LCA), and application of other site-specific simulation models. Particularly, EPIC application will give field level environmental impacts of a given crop that is or can be used to make non-food products. LCA, on the other hand, gives the total environmental impacts of a given non-food product line. Environmental standards are an important ingredient of environmental policies. The more accurate these standards are, the more efficient an environmental policy will be. In addition to policy makers, researchers in environmental disciplines and interdisciplinary sciences will also benefit from improved environmental standards.