exploring the determinants of emerging bioenergy market participation abstract individual biomass producers will play a strong role in the emergence of robust and sustainable bioenergy markets research on what drives their participation however is substantial but fragmented despite a recognition of producer heterogeneity there have also been few comparative analyses of drivers of bioenergy market participation across feedstock types producer groups and geographic regions through narrative review and network analysis the following review of the bioenergy market participation literature generates both an increased appreciation of how bioenergy market participation is assessed in existing research and how social network analysis may be further employed as a tool for literature review across 41 studies selected for qualitative review and a subset of 22 selected for quantitative review the analysis reaches two central conclusions the first pertains to the findings of the literature itself suggesting that a variety of non production objectives structural and social constraints and market related attributes influence bioenergy market participation decisions a second conclusion is that the assessment of these factors varies significantly across the literature for both user group and feedstock type further examination of the individual variables within these segments of the literature as well as of authorship patterns across them suggests that this variation may rise from differences in the subject matter itself and not from differing perspectives of the researchers undertaking the work should disparities in the literature be reflective of actual socio economic differences in their respective markets policies or programs targeted to individual feedstock types or user groups may be more effective in encouraging participation than uniform national policy initiatives

political institutions and financial development an empirical study summary this paper examines whether political institutional improvement promotes financial development using a panel dataset of 90 developed and developing countries over 1960 99 the empirical evidence reveals a positive effect of institutional improvement on financial development at least in the short run particularly for lower income countries the preliminary evidence by a before after event study indicates that a democratic transformation is typically followed by an increase in financial development

determinants of technical efficiency in the bioenergy industry in the eu28 region most previous bioenergy industry research has concentrated on how to implement a certain level of yield however few articles have paid attention to rational resource allocation to increase efficiency to enhance bioenergy production through proper use of available resources this study identified the effects of internal country specific and external macroeconomic determinants of technical efficiency level in the bioenergy industry for the eu28 region the study was established based on a conceptual framework suggesting a correlation between input use and level of technical efficiency a panel data analysis method was employed for the analysis and a panel regression analysis framework based on the fixed effect fe model and random effect re model was used to examine the potential determinants of technical efficiency level in the bioenergy industry for the eu28 region for the period between 1990 and 2013 the results indicate that the technical efficiency level of the bioenergy industry in developing countries is higher than in developed countries the empirical findings also suggest that technical efficiency has greater influence on pure technical efficiency levels capital input labor input gross domestic product inflation and interest rate significantly affected the technical efficiency of the bioenergy industry in the developing and developed countries in the eu28 region during the period of this study the findings clearly call for regulators and decision makers to review the technical efficiency level of the bioenergy industry within the eu28 region this study also provides better information and guidance to the boards of the bioenergy industry as they need to have a clear understanding of the influence technical efficiency has on bioenergy production performance moreover the results of this study have implications for investors who focus mainly on profits from their investments

property tax limits local fiscal behavior and property values evidence from massachusetts under proposition abstract this paper examines the impact of a specific property tax limit proposition 2 1 2 in massachusetts on the fiscal behavior of cities and towns in massachusetts and the capitalization of that behavior into property values proposition 2 1 2 places a cap on the effective property tax rate at 2 5 and limits nominal annual growth in property tax revenues to 2 5 unless residents pass a referendum allowing a greater increase the study analyzes the 1990 1994 period a time when massachusetts municipalities faced significant fiscal stress because of a 30 cut in real state aid and a demographically driven increase in school enrollments the findings include the following 1 proposition 2 1 2 significantly constrained local spending in some communities with most of its impact on school spending 2 constrained communities realized gains in property values to the degree that they were able to increase school spending despite the limitation and 3 changes in non school spending had little impact on property values

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

underlying causal factors of the european union energy intensity econometric evidence abstract the aim of the research is to determine the main factors that define the level of energy intensity in the countries of the european union the research was conducted by estimation of six baseline and six auxiliary regressions with and without time lags in form of one way fixed and random effects error component models on different unbalanced panel data samples covering the period 1995 2015 the obtained baseline regressions results generate three sets of findings the first set consists of extremely robust findings relating to the positive influence of gross fixed capital formation and industrial gross value added and negative effects of real per capita gross domestic product and oil products retail price these variables are statistically significant in all 36 baseline empirical models the second set of results consists of quite robust findings relating to insignificant influence of foreign direct investment and negative influence of coal price according to the results it cannot be confirm the hypothesis of energy saving technology transfer via foreign direct investments in european union member states the third set of results shows that the research has failed to generate any robust findings for economic openness import ratio urbanization and natural gas price which means that the effect of these determinants on energy intensity in european union member states is unspecified finally auxiliary regressions estimation results show that changes in the sectorial composition within the european union member states economies have not enhanced energy saving technological transfer via foreign direct investments

human capital inequality and growth a local perspective abstract a recent body of work has demonstrated the crucial role played by local human capital externalities and local school funding in generating socio economic segregation persistent poverty and low aggregate income or productivity growth we present a simple model which captures the main insights from this literature and prove three general propositions first minor differences in education technologies preferences wealth or minor imperfections in capital markets can lead to a high degree of stratification second stratification makes inequality in education and income more persistent across generations the same is true for total wealth provided the rich succeed in capturing the rents created by their secession finally this polarization or urban areas can be very inefficient especially in the long run

duopoly locations and optimal zoning in a small open city abstract this paper analyzes a duopoly location model with an asymmetric zoning that prohibits firms from locating to a specific interval in a small open linear city it is shown that the maximum differentiation principle presented in d aspremont et al econometrica 47 1979 1145 is still valid under area zoning regulation moreover a zoning regulation can be seen as a policy instrument to limit firms excess profits and a proper regulation may even reduce the distortion in total transportation costs therefore enhancing social welfare specifically the optimal zoning is about 29 5 percent of the city with no amenity effect finally all the land rents raised by zoning are eventually confiscated by the absentee landowner

collaborative production planning of supply chain under price and demand uncertainty abstract this research is motivated by an automobile manufacturing supply chain network it involves a multi echelon production system with material supply component fabrication manufacturing and final product distribution activities we address the production planning issue by considering bill of materials and the trade offs between inventories production costs and customer service level due to its complexity an integrated solution framework which combines scatter evolutionary algorithm fuzzy programming and stochastic chance constrained programming are combined to jointly take up the issue we conduct a computational study to evaluate the model numerical results using the proposed algorithm confirm the advantage of the integrated planning approach compared with other solution methodologies the supply chain profits from the proposed approach consistently outperform in some cases up to 13 better the impacts of uncertainty in demand material price and other parameters on the performance of the supply chain are studied through sensitivity analysis we found the proposed model is effective in developing robust production plans under various market conditions

productivity change technical progress and relative efficiency change in the public accounting industry we present evidence on components of productivity change in the public accounting industry toward the end of the 20th century using revenue and human resource data from 64 of the 100 largest public accounting firms in the united states for the 1995 1999 period we analyze productivity change technical progress and relative efficiency change over time the average public accounting firm experienced a productivity growth of 9 5 between 1995 and 1999 we find support for the hypothesis that technical progress rather than an improvement in relative efficiency was the reason for this productivity growth firms that were early movers into management advisory services mas and those that emphasized growth in mas over growth in the traditional audit and tax services enjoyed significantly higher productivity growth than their peers these firms also contributed significantly more to the industry s technical progress

total factor energy efficiency of regions in china abstract this paper analyzes energy efficiencies of 29 administrative regions in china for the period 1995 2002 with a newly introduced index most existing studies of regional productivity and efficiency neglect energy inputs we use the data envelopment analysis dea to find the target energy input of each region in china at each particular year the index of total factor energy efficiency tfee then divides the target energy input by the actual energy input in our dea model labor capital stock energy consumption and total sown area of farm crops used as a proxy of biomass energy are the four inputs and real gdp is the single output the conventional energy productivity ratio regarded as a partial factor energy efficiency index is computed for comparison in contrast to tfee our index is found fitting better to the real case according to the tfee index rankings the central area of china has the worst energy efficiency and its total adjustmentof energy consumption amount is over half of china s total regional tfee in china generally improved during the research period except for the western area a u shape relation between the area s tfee and per capita income in the areas of china is found confirming the scenario that energy efficiency eventually improves with economic growth

differential impact of korean banking system reforms on bank productivity abstract we study the impact of banking system reforms during a crisis following a period of undisciplined lending regulatory changes aimed at strengthening the banks capital structure and risk management practices do not have a uniform impact on bank productivity but rather favor financially sound or strategically privileged banks we present evidence documenting the differential impact of regulatory reforms on korean commercial bank productivity over the period 1995 2005 average technical efficiency of banks decreased during the financial crisis of 1997 1998 it improved following the subsequent bank restructuring and continued to improve through 2005 the capital adequacy ratio is positively associated with banks technical efficiency the non performing loans ratio is negatively associated with technical efficiency both relationships are accentuated during the crisis but attenuated after the reforms

proposal for a sustainability evaluation framework for bioenergy production systems using the mesmis methodology abstract the bioenergy economy promises to stimulate the local economic growth and improve the welfare of people living in rural areas to accomplish this there is global consensus on the sustainability indicators that must be evaluated in bioenergy production systems bpss however the utilization of these indicators has several constraints such as their interpretation and application in developing countries in addition to the inherent complexity of bpss here we propose a sustainability framework applicable to bpss first we use the framework for assessing the sustainability of the natural resource management systems mesmis methodology to define a bps and derive economic environmental and social indicators after that we use the distance to target weighting method to describe a sustainability gradient of five levels for each indicator finally we use the sustainability gradient to normalize the indicators and thereby weight and aggregate the indicators into a sustainability index si after the application of the mesmis methodology a bps was defined as three interrelated subsystems 1 the biomass subsystem dedicated to the feedstock supply 2 the transformation subsystem dedicated to convert the feedstock into bioenergy and 3 the social subsystem that provides the workforce this sustainability framework allows comparing two or more bpss in cross sectional and longitudinal studies a total of 7 economic indicators 10 environmental indicators and 11 social indicators were described in terms of a sustainability gradient the sustainability gradient converts the indicators to comparable units then we propose to aggregate these indicators into three subindices by evaluated area an economic subindex an environmental subindex and a social subindex each subindex ranges from 0 for an unsustainable bps to 5 for a highly sustainable bps the si integrates these three subindices giving the same relevance to the economic environmental and social areas

hedonic markets and sorting equilibria bid function envelopes for public services and neighborhood amenities abstract hedonic regressions with house value as the dependent variable are widely used to study public services and neighborhood amenities this paper builds on the theory of household bidding and sorting across communities to derive bid function envelopes which provide a form for these regressions this approach allows for household heterogeneity and multiple amenities yields estimates of the price elasticity of amenity demand directly from the hedonic without a rosen two step procedure and provides tests of hypotheses about sorting an application to cleveland area data from 2000 yields price elasticities for school quality and neighborhood ethnic composition and supports the sorting hypotheses

supply chain optimization of petroleum organization under uncertainty in market demands and prices a multi period stochastic planning model has been developed and implemented for a supply chain network of a petroleum organization operating in an oil producing country under uncertain market conditions the proposed supply chain network consists of all activities related to crude oil production processing and distribution uncertainties were introduced in market demands and prices a deterministic optimization model was first developed and tested the impact of uncertainty on the supply chain was studied by performing a sensitivity analysis in which 20 deviations were introduced in market demands and prices of different commodities a stochastic formulation was then proposed which is based on the two stage problem with finite number of realizations the proposed stochastic programming approach proved to be quite effective in developing resilient production plans in light of high degree of uncertainty in market conditions the anticipated production plans have a considerably lower expected value of perfect information evpi the main conclusion of this study is that for an oil producing country with oil processing capabilities the impact of economic uncertainties may be tolerated by an appropriate balance between crude exports and processing capacities

green supply chain design a mathematical modeling approach based on a multi objective optimization model abstract increasing levels of industrialization of developed nations associated with globalization trends have been creating new challenges to supply chain management scm for decades the main focus of scm has been on efficient ways of managing the flows through complex networks of supplier producers and customers more recently and as a result of the exponential increase of energy and materials consumption rates of energy and materials sustainable development arise as an urgent issue and new approaches to scm are required to incorporate environmental and economic concerns in the design of supply chains in this paper a new green supply chain gsc design approach has been proposed to deal with the trade offs between environmental and financial issues in order to reduce negative impacts on the environment caused by the increasing levels of industrialization the new approach incorporates a closed loop network to accommodate the reprocessing paradigm of disposal products and a multi objective optimization mathematical model to minimize overall costs and carbon dioxide emissions when setting the supply chain optimization process is performed using three scalarization approaches namely weighted sum method weighted tchebycheff and augmented weighted tchebycheff computational results are analyzed to identify the advantages and drawbacks of each approach the model was tested in a case study and results allowed to identify the capability of the model to deal with the trade offs between the costs and environmental issues as well as to identify its main limitation when addressing real size problems

chain to chain competition on product sustainability this paper studies the game model of two sustainable supply chains under competition in product sustainability derives the equilibrium structures of the two chain system and generates the managerial insights when the supplier and manufacturer within the reverse supply chain are competitive the sustainability degrees demands and profits under three structures of this two chain system are analyzed it is found that although vertical integration is always a nash equilibrium it is pareto optimal only when the competition degree is low on the other hand a more generalized case for the former model is investigated when the supplier and manufacturer are cooperative in bargaining the wholesale price and the effects of bargaining power to the sustainability degrees demands and chain member profits are studied it is further shown that the structure of vertical integration channels is not an equilibrium unless the two sustainable supply chains are independent

why do governments subsidize gasoline consumption an empirical analysis of global gasoline prices 2002 2009 abstract governments spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually to subsidize the consumption of fossil fuels without understanding the environmental and economic problems this practice creates to shed light on these problems we examine the case of gasoline subsidies using data on gasoline prices in 137 countries for the years 2002 2009 it is useful to study gasoline pricing because gasoline is the most important transportation fuel and there are data for many countries for the time period of investigation we find that major oil producers subsidize gasoline consumption by artificially reducing prices countries with weak institutional capacity also seem to subsidize gasoline but the effects are weaker these results suggest that policy interventions to improve institutional capacity could help developing countries in particular reduce their fossil fuel subsidies

subsidies as sorting devices abstract the divergence between tax payments and the cost of providing public services that arise from financing local public services provides an incentive for higher income communities to deter the entry of lower income households into their community here we demonstrate that higher income households to insure that low income households do not enter their community or reduce the number that do enter subsidize goods consumed by higher income households more than by lower income households this strategy will make the rich community less attractive to the poor deterring their entry to the community

competition and cooperation between supply chains in multi objective petroleum green supply chain a game theoretic approach petroleum supply chain is one of the most important and sophisticated managing missions in both developing and developed countries nowadays environmental pollution is another critical factor in designing the petroleum supply chain this importance encourages the governments to minimize the amount of environmental pollution and maximize their obtained profit simultaneously by enacting required legislations on the transportation modes and the refineries considering maximizing the job creation and each stakeholder s profit and minimizing the emission of co2 and other greenhouse gases at the same time is called sustainable petroleum supply chain which has been paid little attention despite its significance therefore the modelling of petroleum supply chain considering sustainability and pricing issues is investigated for the first time in this work and a sustainable competitive petroleum supply chain scpsc model is developed to minimize pollution while maximizing the profits and job creation this problem is a two level model the first level in scpsc is the competition between the supply chains of the government and the private sectors which is modelled by the game theory approach including nash and stackelberg equilibria the optimal price and demand for each supply chain determined in the first level are considered as the second level parameters in the second level the optimal values of the decisions in designing the petroleum supply chain will be obtained by solving mixed integer linear programming milp under the mentioned three objective functions finally the proposed model is applied to a real world case in the national iranian oil company nioc based on the results of the stackelberg equilibrium the government profits increase by 11 12 while that of the private sector decreases by 25 4 and 28 11 increasing in the government profit is due to increased demand provided by government the results show that the whole profit of the petroleum supply chain in nash equilibrium is 9 8 more than that in the stackelberg equilibrium

efficiency equilibrium and exclusion when the poor chase the rich using a simple adverse selection model we characterize equilibrium when the rich chase the poor if communities are established by competitive entrepreneurs the equilibrium exists is unique and is efficient it involves either complete separation or complete pooling different income groups may rank these qualitative outcomes differently we show how restrictions imposed by a central government may alter the nature of equilibrium such restrictions may be explained as the choice of a low income majority altering the equilibrium to the pooling outcome which they prefer

neighbourhood composition and residential land prices does exclusion raise or lower values hedonic price models are used to explore the degree to which land use and racial composition used as outcome proxies for local zoning practices influence residential land values in santa clara county california fiscal pressures have prompted many california communities to zone on the basis of tax yield potential especially in fast growing settings like santa clara county controlling for variables related to job accessibility as well as proximity to regional transport infrastructure the analysis shows that indicators of land use diversity and jobs housing balance generally correlate with high residential land prices while the fiscal instincts of californian municipalities is to shun housing in favour of commercial development and thus to create imbalanced land development patterns this research suggests these fiscal advantages are partly offset by lower land values and thus lower property tax intake racial diversity on the other hand lowered residential property values even when controlling fo

edge versus center finding common ground in the capitalization debate abstract a continuing debate questions whether capitalization of taxes and public services into house price occurs the current study argues for an inverse relationship between housing supply elasticity and capitalization rates a sample is split into houses on the interior and edge of the urban area capitalization of schooling and crime occurs everywhere but it is weaker toward the edge of an urban area where housing supply elasticities and developer activity are greater tax results are less robust but the capitalization rates of crime and school quality are roughly twice as strong on the interior than on the urban fringe

future perspectives of international bioenergy trade abstract according to the iea world energy outlook 2012 primary demand for bioenergy will strongly increase up to the year 2035 the demand for biofuels and biomass for electricity is expected to triple these changes will have an impact on the regional balance of demand and supply of bioenergy leading to both increasing trade flows and changes in trade patterns the gfpm timer and poles models have been selected for a detailed comparison of scenarios and their impact on global bioenergy trade in ambitious scenarios 14 26 of global bioenergy demand is traded between regions in 2030 the model scenarios show a huge range of potential bioenergy trade for solid biomass in ambitious scenarios bioenergy trade ranges from 700 mt to more than 2 500 mt in 2030 for liquid biomass the ambitious scenarios show a bioenergy trade in the range of 65 360 mt in 2030 considering the currently very small share of internationally traded bioenergy this would result in huge challenges and require tremendous changes in terms of production pretreatment of biomass and development of logistic chains

an assessment of international trade related to bioenergy use in austria methodological aspects recent developments and the relevance of indirect trade abstract increasing international biomass trade for energy and concerns about sustainability of globally traded biomass have raised interest in assessments of cross border trade related to bioenergy within this paper approaches to overcome methodological difficulties related to biomass trade are proposed and applied for the case of austria biomass currently has a share of 15 5 in austria s primary energy consumption of 1354 pj 2009 according to energy statistics the rate of self sufficiency with biomass for energy defined as the ratio of domestic production to inland consumption with both imports and exports taken into account is 91 however feedstock imports for transport fuel production and indirect imports of wood based fuels wood processing residues and waste liquor of the paper industry originating from imported wood are not taken into account in energy statistics but prove to be of some significance imports of agricultural commodities to the amount of 9 7 pj can be attributed to domestic biofuel production and indirect imports of wood based fuels account for 31 pj with these import streams taken into account the share of domestic fuels in bioenergy use is only 67 rather than 84 as official energy statistics suggest on the other hand austria is exporting more than 50 of its production of sawnwood panelboard and paper products

international bioenergy trade a review of past developments in the liquid biofuel market policies aimed to promote biofuels locally had tremendous effects on global market developments across the past decade this article develops insights into the interaction of these policies and market forces via a comprehensive collection and analysis of international production and trade data it shows that world biofuel production and trade has grown exponentially from below 30 pj in 2000 to 572 pj in 2009 for biodiesel from 340 pj in 2000 to over 1540 pj in 2009 for fuel ethanol the eu has dominated world biodiesel whereas the us and brazil have led fuel ethanol production world net biofuel trade reached 120 130 pj in 2009 and was directed towards the most lucrative markets for biodiesel this has been the eu whose imports rose to 92 pj in 2008 and remained at 70 pj in 2009 regarding fuel ethanol both the us and the eu have been prime destinations for competitively priced exports the vast majority of which originated in brazil international biofuel trade is both supply and demand driven the demand side was shaped by support policies which generally increased the domestic market value of biofuels trade developed wherever these policies prices were not accompanied by respective measures it is found that import duties largely influenced trade volumes whereas trade routes were mainly driven by tariff preferences trade regimes appear to have been designed and adapted unilaterally along national interests causing market disruptions trade inefficiencies and disputes to avoid these it is important to explicitly consider international trade implications of national trade policies a prerequisite is to improve the understanding of the underlying complex and interwoven links within the market the current lack of adequate homogeneous international reporting of biofuel production and trade statistics could be bridged via internationally standardized custom clarifications trade factor interrelations also need to be investigated further

optimal crude oil procurement under fluctuating price in an oil refinery abstract in this paper we study the optimal procurement and operation of an oil refinery the crude oil prices follow geometric brownian motion processes with correlation we build a multiperiod inventory problem where each period involves an operation problem such as separation or blending the decisions are the amount of crude oils to purchase and the amount of oil products to produce we employ approximate dynamic programming methods to solve this multiperiod multiproduct optimization problem numerical results reveal that this complex problem can be approximately solved with little loss of optimality further we find that the approximate solution significantly outperforms a set of myopic policies that are currently used

sustainability criteria for bioenergy systems results from an expert survey abstract environmental impacts associated with the use of fossil fuels rising prices potential limitations in supply and concerns about regional and national security are driving the development and use of biomass for bioenergy biofuels and bioproducts however the use of biomass does not automatically imply that its production conversion and use are sustainable in order to operationalize sustainability assessments of biomass systems it is crucial to identify critical criteria but keep their number and measurement at a manageable level the selection of these criteria can vary depending on individual s expertise geographical region where they work and spatial scale they are focused on no clear consensus has yet emerged on what experts consider as critical indicators of sustainability objectives of this paper were to analyze how key experts perceive the 35 sustainability criteria for bioenergy found in emerging sustainability assessment frameworks and to identify levels of agreement and uncertainty experts were asked to rate the criteria for attributes of relevance practicality reliability and importance perceptions of the importance of the 35 criteria varied among the experts surveyed only two criteria energy balance and greenhouse gas balance were perceived as critical by more than half of the respondents social criteria and locally applied criteria were generally ranked low for all four attributes seven of the 12 criteria scored as most important focused on environmental issues four were social and only one was economic of the 12 most important criteria seven were ranked low in practicality and reliability indicating that mechanisms to assess a number of important criteria need to be developed the spatial scale the experts worked at and their profession explained most of the differences in importance ranking between experts while regional focus had minimal effect criteria that were ranked low for importance were characterized by a lack of consensus suggesting the need for further debate regarding their inclusion in sustainability assessments outcomes of the survey provide a foundation for further discussions and development of sustainability assessments for bioenergy systems and may also provide a basis for assessing individual bioenergy projects within their specific geographic ecological societal and technological context and scale

opportunities and barriers for international bioenergy trade recently the international trade of various bioenergy commodities has grown rapidly yet this growth is also hampered by some barriers the aim of this paper is to obtain an overview of what market actors currently perceive as major opportunities and barriers for the development of international bioenergy trade the work focuses on three bioenergy commodities bioethanol biodiesel and wood pellets data were collected through an internet based questionnaire the majority of the 141 respondents had an industrial background geographically two thirds were from mainly western europe with other minor contributions from all other continents results show that import tariffs and the implementation of sustainability certification systems are perceived as potentially major barriers for the trade of bioethanol and biodiesel while logistics are seen mainly as an obstacle for wood pellets development of technical standards was deemed more as an opportunity than a barrier for all commodities most important drivers were high fossil fuel prices and climate change mitigation policies concluding to overcome some of the barriers specific actions will be required by market parties and policy makers import tariffs for biofuels could be reduced or abolished linked to multinational trade agreements and harmonization including provisions on technical standards and sustainability requirements