Acknowledging the complexity of value chains for biobased products and the variety of research questions from different stakeholder groups, several adaptations of the LCA approach have been developed, allowing assessments on the product, process, company or project level within the framework of the bioeconomy. The use of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, which can be used to assess potential impacts associated with the life cycles of biomass for energy and material purposes, has become an increasingly important instrument in science and also in political decisions (McManus and Taylor 2015 Sala et al. The availability of tools and default values could therefore support market actors with an efficient implementation of the RED II. Additionally, individual calculation requires a high effort for data collection. Storage of digestate, N-fertilization and the use of fossil diesel were identified as the main factors, influencing the GHG intensity of the respective value chains. Most of the biogas plants assessed were found to be compliant with the required minimum GHG emissions reduction. Based on primary data from 10 biogas and biomethane supply chains in Germany, the applicability of the RED II greenhouse gas (GHG) emission calculation approach was analysed. In this publication, we present one of the studies analysed, in which a simplified LCA approach defined in the renewable energy directive (RED II), was applied. The preliminary results of the study show mostly practice-linked applications with a focus on the assessment of fuels, their production and technical feasibility. An internal project at the Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum- DBFZ is investigating, which priority areas have been addressed at the institute with LCA. Life cycle assessments (LCA) approaches, analysing potential impacts associated with the production and use of biomass for energy and material purposes, have become increasingly important in recent years.
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