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The first Chempor Conference held in Lisbon in 1975 under the auspices of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, heralded a regular wide-ranging review of research and development in Portugal and the UK Progressively in later years the Conferences have attracted contributions from other European countries and indeed further afield. There is an increasing awareness of the problems for the environment, notably global warming, brought about by human activities. Recent predictions about the future are dire, particularly regarding food and water for a rapidly growing world population. They represent a substantial challenge to the scientific and technical fraternity. In response to that challenge it is important to keep up to date with technical developments, to meet and keep in touch with coworkers in associated fields, and to cooperate wherever possible. The papers presented at the Chempor and other conferences have made and continue to make a significant contribution to that objective of meeting the challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and the wish to reduce the dependence on oil are the incentives for the development of alternative energy sources. The use of lignocellulosic biomass together with cellulosic processing technology provides opportunities to produce fuel ethanol with less competition with food and nature. Many studies on energy analysis and life cycle assessment of second-generation bioethanol have been conducted. However, due to the different methodology used and different system boundary definition, it is difficult to compare their results. To permit a direct comparison of fuel ethanol from different lignocelluloses in terms of energy use and environmental impact, seven studies conducted in our group were summarized in this paper, where the same technologies were used to convert biomass to ethanol, the same system boundaries were defined, and the same allocation procedures were followed. A complete set of environmental impacts ranging from global warming potential to toxicity aspects is used. The results provide an overview on the energy efficiency and environmental performance of using fuel ethanol derived from different feedstocks in comparison with gasoline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]