Decision support system for biomass and energy planning in mountain areas: the case of Tuscany Appennine.

At the present time it is a matter of fact that the renewable energies sector is in a period of strong expansion. The extremely rapid diffusion of thermal and electric power stations fed by renewable resources demonstrates that the production of energy from those resources is attractive. Among the renewable resources, biomasses, especially the forestry ones, seem to have the greater developing potentialities. The use of this resource, and consequently the developing of that specific market, is also determining positive effects on the agricultural and forest field, which in numerous European countries is no longer competitive in the global markets. In order to cope with this exponential interest, it is necessary to carry out an accurate setting of the interventions and of the investments in the sector, in order to avoid impoverishment phenomena both of the environmental and financial resources. The suggested study, developed in a forest district located in the Apennine Mountains of central Italy, has the aim of assessing both the sustainability of the supply of agro – forest biomasses in the territory under study and the potentially sustainable energy demand of those resources. This assessment means to set the interventions coherently with the development of a wood-energy chain able to guarantee the achievement of the objectives of economic and environmental sustainability of the chain. As regards the assessment of the supply of the forest biomass, the suggested approach is based on the theory of the renewable resources that is on models which assess the supply of biomasses in the long term, with relation to both the natural capital stock and the sustainable drawing rate. This approach, developed on a territorial base thanks to the setting up of a Geographic Informative System with ecological, geographic, orographic and physical information, allowed also the assessment of the economic sustainability of the presumed drawings .