Moritz Wagner

Geisenheim University · Department of Applied Ecology

Perennial biomass crops (PBCs) can potentially contribute to all ten Common Agricultural Policy (2023-27) objectives and up to eleven of the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals. This paper discusses interlinked issues that must be considered in the expansion of PBC production: i) available land; ii) yield potential; iii) integration into far...

Perennial biomass crops (PBCs) can potentially contribute to all ten Common Agricultural Policy (2023-27) objectives and up to eleven of the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals. This paper discusses interlinked issues that must be considered in the expansion of PBC production: i) available land; ii) yield potential; iii) integration into far...

Interest in sustainability has increased significantly in the wine sector in the past few years, driven by customer interest, as well as the impact of global warming-intensified weather extremes on wine growers. For a sustainable future the wine industry must design its entire value chain in such ways that it conserves and regenerates the natural e...

The transition to a sustainable biobased economy promises to free the economy from its dependence on finite fossil resources by replacing them with biomass derived primarily from agricultural production. However, this often threatens the ecosystem services on which its very existence depends, such as climate regulation, erosion mitigation, and biod...

Social aspects of miscanthus cultivation have been investigated in a limited way in the scientific literature. Adopting existing frameworks for social life‐cycle assessment enables assessments to include numerous social aspects; however, the relevance of these aspects depends on the local context. This study aims to identify the most relevant socia...

The current geological epoch is characterized by anthropogenic activity that greatly impacts on natural ecosystems and their integrity. The complex networks of ecosystem services (ESs) are often ignored because the provision of natural resources, such as food and industrial crops, is mistakenly viewed as an independent process separate from ecosyst...

Demand for sustainably produced biomass is expected to increase with the need to provide renewable commodities, improve resource security, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with COP26 commitments. Studies have demonstrated additional environmental benefits of using perennial biomass crops (PBCs), when produced appropriately, as a feedstoc...

Background Perennial C4 grasses from the genus Miscanthus are widely regarded as leading and promising dedicated bioenergy crops due to their high biomass accumulation on marginal land with low environmental impacts and maintenance requirements over its productive life. There is an urgent socio-political and environmental need to ramp up the produc...

The demand for food and renewable energy is increasing significantly, whereas the availability of land for agricultural use is declining. Agrivoltaic systems (AVS), which combine agricultural production with solar energy generation on the same area, are a promising opportunity with the potential to satisfy this demand while avoiding land-use confli...

Agroecosystems provide numerous ecosystem services (ESs) such as provisioning, regulating, habitat and cultural services. At the same time, the management of these agroecosystems can cause various negative impacts on the environment such as the generation of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the way humans manage agroecosystems often focuses only...

Two major global challenges related to agriculture are climate change and the unbalanced nitrogen cycle. For both, national and international reduction targets have been defined to catalyse policy support for more sustainable farming systems. Miscanthus cultivation in water protection areas has been proposed as a contribution to achieving these tar...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely recognized tool for the assessment of the potential environmental impacts associated with the life cycle of a product or service. The environmental impact category most commonly quantified in LCAs is global warming potential, a measure of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. For agricultural products such as mis...

Insulation materials decrease the final energy consumption of buildings. In Germany, fossil and mineral insulations dominate the market despite numerous Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) showing that bio‐based insulations can offer environmental benefits. Evaluating the results of such LCAs is however complex due to a lack of comparability or costs con...

The combination of bioethanol production and carbon capture and storage technologies (BECCS) is considered an indispensable method for the achievement of the targets set by the Paris agreement. In Croatia, a first-of-its-kind biorefinery project is currently underway that aims to integrate a second-generation ethanol plant into an existing fossil r...

Social Life-Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) is under continuous development. The Methodological Sheets for Subcategories in S-LCA are a set of guidelines commonly used for the performance of such assessments. They cover a variety of stakeholders and subcategories for the social assessment of products in general. However, they may not necessarily be approp...

Carbon neutrality in the transport sector is a key challenge for the growing bioeconomy as the share of biofuels has stagnated over the past decade. This can be attributed to basic economics and a lack of a robust market for these technologies. Consequently, more sustainable biomass supply concepts are required that reduce negative impacts on the e...

Perennial rhizomatous grasses (PRG), such as miscanthus and switchgrass, are considered promising lignocellulosic feedstocks. Their cultivation is expected to experience a significant increase in the near future, as it offers a wide range of benefits. For instance, when PRG replace typical annual crops, positive biodiversity impacts are usually ant...

The research objective of this study is the development of long-term sustainable Marginal Agricultural Land Low-Input Systems for industrial crop cultivation. And the research question of this study is: How bioenergy cropping systems of tomorrow could be made more sustainable under social-ecological terms. It was found that there are five main requ...

Maize silage is the main biogas co‐substrate in Germany, but its use is often questioned due to negative environmental impacts. Perennial wild plant mixtures (WPM) are increasingly considered alternatives, as these extensive systems improve soil quality and enhance agrobiodiversity. Methane yields per hectare however do not match those of maize. Th...

In brief: The consideration and assessment of ecosystem services at the planning stage of new biobased value chains enables the development and implementation of biomass cropping systems that better support biodiversity and resilience in times of climate change than business as usual. For example, ecosystem services support biological pest and dise...

The growing bioeconomy will require a greater supply of biomass in the future for both bioenergy and bio-based products. Today, many bioenergy cropping systems (BCS) are suboptimal due to either social-ecological threats or technical limitations. In addition, the competition for land between bioenergy-crop cultivation, food-crop cultivation, and bi...

As the prevalence of diabetes is predicted to rise globally in the coming decades, the demand for sugar substitutes is expected to increase significantly. In this context, natural sweeteners have been receiving particular attention, as artificial sweeteners have been associated with obesity and cardiovascular disease. One natural sweetener is yacon...

The biomass demand for the use as both renewable energy source and raw material for the biotechnology industry is increasing. Simultaneously, the supply of biomass is requested to become more cost-competitive. Innovative solutions for cost-effective biomass production should also avoid indirect land use changes and direct negative environmental eff...

Perennial biomass crops (PBC) are considered a crucial feedstock for sustainable biomass supply to the bioeconomy that compete less with food production compared to traditional crops. However, large‐scale development of PBC as a means to reach greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation targets would require not only the production on land previously not used...

In the context of a biorefinery, the potential of the short rotation coppice “poplar with bark” as a feedstock for the acid-catalyzed ethanol-water Organosolv process and furthermore for possible applications of the biomass components was investigated aiming at optimal separation of the non-standardized woody biomass. The study was supported and ev...

Environmental issues surrounding conventional annual biogas crops have led to growing interest in alternative crops, such as miscanthus. In addition to the better environmental performance, miscanthus can be grown on marginal land where no competition with feed and food crops is anticipated. On marginal land however, biomass yields are significantl...

Crude rubber seed oil (CRSO) is a promising but currently underutilized biodiesel feedstock alternative, extracted by pressing the seeds of the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis). Rubber trees are cultivated across more than 11.4 million hectares worldwide, mainly in Southeast Asia. Despite their suitability as a biodiesel feedstock source, rubber se...

Lignocellulosic ethanol represents a renewable alternative to petrol. Miscanthus, a perennial plant that grows on marginal land, is characterised by efficient use of resources and is considered a promising source of lignocellulosic biomass. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to determine the environmental impacts of ethanol production from...

Two significant errors were found in this article: In Table 1, due to a missing decimal point, Dry Matter Yields are displayed ten times too high. In Figure 2, the caption of the y-axis should read kg CO2-equivalents ha−1a−1 instead of t CO2-equivalents ha−1a−1.

In a developing bioeconomy, the demand for biomass for industrial purposes is expected to increase significantly. This demand needs to be met in a sustainable way and without compromising food security. With this goal in mind, resource-efficient lignocellulosic crops, such as perennial energy grasses, are often cited as a biomass source with low ne...

Growth in planted areas of Miscanthus for biomass in Europe has stagnated since 2010 due to technical challenges, economic barriers and environmental concerns. These limitations need to be overcome before biomass production from Miscanthus can expand to several million hectares. In this paper, we consider the economic and environmental effects of i...

In recent years, considerable progress has been made in miscanthus research: improvement of management practices, breeding of new genotypes, especially for marginal conditions, and development of novel utilization options. The purpose of the current study was a holistic analysis of the environmental performance of such novel miscanthus-based value...

Miscanthus is a high-yielding lignocellulosic crop providing up to 40 t of dry matter per hectare and year. Its biomass can be used in energetic or material utilization pathways. The goal of this study was the comparison of three different conversion techniques (combustion, second-generation bioethanol, and insulation material) for miscanthus bioma...

Delayed harvest can improve the quality of miscanthus biomass for combustion and enhance the long-term sustainability of the crop, despite accompanying yield losses. The aim of this study is to identify the optimal harvesting time, which can deliver improved biomass quality for combustion of novel miscanthus genotypes at various sites across Europe...

In Europe, the perennial C4 grass miscanthus is currently mainly cultivated for energy generation via combustion. In recent years, anaerobic digestion has been identified as a promising alternative utilization pathway. Anaerobic digestion produces a higher-value intermediate (biogas), which can be upgraded to biomethane, stored in the existing natu...

Biogas is considered a promising option for complementing the fluctuating energy supply from other renewable sources. Maize is currently the dominant biogas crop, but its environmental performance is questionable. Through its replacement with high-yielding and nutrient-efficient perennial C4 grasses, the environmental impact of biogas could be cons...

This paper describes the complete findings of the EU-funded research project OPTIMISC, which investigated methods to optimize the production and use of miscanthus biomass. Miscanthus bioenergy and bioproduct chains were investigated by trialing 15 diverse germplasm types in a range of climatic and soil environments across central Europe, Ukraine, R...

The decarbonization of the economy will require large quantities of biomass for energy and biomaterials. This biomass should be produced in sufficient quantities and in a sustainable way. Perennial crops in particular are often cited in this context as having low environmental impacts. One example of such crops is miscanthus, a tall perennial rhizo...

Field trials in Europe with Miscanthus over the past 25 years have demonstrated that interspecies hybrids such as M. x giganteus (Mxg) combine both high yield potentials and low inputs in a wide range of soils and climates. Miscanthus hybrids are expected to play a major role in the provision of perennial lignocellulosic biomass across much of Euro...

This paper describes the complete findings of the EU-funded research project OPTIMISC, which investigated methods to optimize the production and use of miscanthus biomass. Miscanthus bioenergy and bioproduct chains were investigated by trialing 15 diverse germplasm types in a range of climatic and soil environments across central Europe, Ukraine, R...