While climate change mitigation strategies across the EU have often promoted the use of wood-based biomass for heat and power supply to reduce the use of fossil fuels, its actual benefits are unclear. The use of wood-based biomass can pose risks to air quality and health, especially when used in small-scale heating systems in cities. To leverage synergies and avoid trade-offs between climate change mitigation, air quality and other environmental impacts, policymaking should be supported by integrated quantitative analyses. This article presents a novel life-cycle assessment framework to calculate the potential environmental impacts of wood-based biomass use in small-scale residential heating systems, for a wide range of impact categories. The framework is applied to (i) the assessment of current wood-based biomass heating impacts across 23 EU Member States and 87 cities and (ii) two illustrative scenario analyses for five countries evaluating environmental trade-offs and co-benefits of energy-related measures. The results for climate change (CC) and particulate matter (PM) show that (i) small-scale solid wood-based biomass systems still pose significant risks to air quality and public health, with limited (and uncertain) CC benefits; (ii) higher-efficiency heating systems may reduce PM trade-offs, but their CC benefits are limited due to additional supply chain impacts; and (iii) large-scale heating systems, such as district heating, can offer larger environmental benefits than small-scale systems. A complementary analysis shows that the results for PM are generally underestimated and overlook the variability of health effects resulting from air pollutant emissions across cities. The framework is widely applicable and, complemented with case-specific data, it can provide relevant results to inform policymaking at multiple geographical and institutional scales.
BASTOS Joana;
GIUNTOLI Jacopo;
ARRIGA Nicola;
BANJA Manjola;
MONFORTI-FERRARIO Fabio;
PASQUALINO Roberto;
ZAULI SAJANI Stefano;
VALENZANO Annarita;
PISONI Enrico;
2026-04-28
ELSEVIER
JRC140732
2352-5509 (online),
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352550926000400,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC140732,
10.1016/j.spc.2026.04.002 (online),
This document is only visible at the Commission level.
You are not authorized to publish or distribute it outside the European Commission.
This is a public document. You can share this publication.
Additional supporting files
| File name | Description | File type | |
|---|
