Measuring the sustainability of biomass resources the sustainable biomass index SBI

Nowadays world's energy market changed rapidly because of a decrease of unrenewable energy resources together with the growing public environmental awareness. In order to give consideration to this development, the existing renewable energy resources have to be utilized in an efficient sustainable way. Therefore, biomass energy systems, as the only renewable energy system achieving continuous power on a high level, play a significant role. These systems can only be implemented sustainable if the utilized biomass resource is conforming to the sustainability. Hence, we have elaborated the Sustainable Biomass Index SBI to help the planning authorities and energy investment groups to identify the best biomass resource for their requirements. After giving a brief overview of recent possibilities of sustainable measurement, we illustrate the structure and the data content of the SBI. Proximate, the calculation and application of this Index is given.