abstract
The rising price of fossil fuel and the increasing environmental concern encourage the use of biomasses
as energy sources. Aim of this study was to compare two poplar SRC and vSRC (6 and 3 years rotation
cycle) with an annual crop (maize), used for biomass production in north Italy.
The average of the biomass production was 13.9 Mg DM ha1 per year for the SRC and vSRC poplar and
19.2 Mg DM ha1 for the maize.
The energy consumption for the poplar cultivations was about 15 GJ ha1 per year, which represented
only the 6% of the energy biomass product (about 257 GJ ha1 per year).
The input value of the maize was higher (26.8 GJ ha1 per year). In this case, the input value was about
the 7% of the energy content in the biomass product (about 370 GJ ha1 per year).
During the vSRC cultivation an amount of 8090 kg CO2 eq ha1 was emitted, 6420 kg CO2 eq ha1 for
the SRC and 26,370 kg CO2 eq ha1 for the maize.
Compared to the maize, the poplar SRC (or vSRC) crops are interesting from an energetic point of view,
while maize requires less manpower, but it has major problems related to the landscape biodiversity.