Agricultural woody residues are available in massive quantities and provide a considerable potential for
energy production. However, to encourage environmentally sustainable bioenergy strategies, it is necessary
to assess the environmental performance of each specific bioenergy chain. Life cycle assessment
(LCA) is recognized to be one of the best methodologies to evaluate the environmental burdens of bioenergy
chains. The application of LCA to bioenergy from agricultural residues requires practitioners to make
choices on how to interpret agricultural residues (i.e. by-products or co-products) and on how to allocate
emissions among the different products generated along the bioenergy chain. These are among the most
debated issues in the LCA community, given their potentially large influence on final LCA outcomes. A
uniform consensus on these issues is still lacking, and no single method is equally suitable for all solutions.