Large-scale introduction of forest-based biorefineries: Actor perspectives and the impacts of a dynamic biomass market
Journal article, 2020

Large-scale implementation of forest-based biofuel production will have an impact on biomass prices, something which in turn will affect biofuel production costs. The profitability of emerging biofuel production technologies is usually assessed using techno-economic or market approaches. While techno-economic approaches have a detailed description of technologies within plant-level or supply chain system boundaries, they build on exogenously given static biomass prices. Conversely, market approaches have a consistent description of the economic system including market interactions for prices within local or national boundaries, but they generally lack technological depth. This paper combines these two approaches using an iterative framework for a case study optimising the production cost of liquefied biomethane (LBG) using different configurations of sawmill-integrated biomass gasification. Cost estimates are developed using system boundaries surrounding a LBG production plant, and the Swedish national borders, reflecting the plant-owner and policymaker perspectives, respectively. The results show that different plant configurations are favoured depending on the choice between minimising the biofuel production cost for the plant-owner or for the policymaker. Market dynamics simulated by the iterative procedure show that a direct policy support of 36–56 EUR/MWh would be needed to sustain large-scale LBG production, which is 12–31% higher than the necessary policy support estimated based on static biomass prices.

Price formation

Large-scale

Policymaker

Plant-owner

Biofuel

Supply chain

Author

Jonas Zetterholm

Luleå University of Technology

Johan Ahlström

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Energy Technology

Elina Bryngemark

Luleå University of Technology

Biomass and Bioenergy

0961-9534 (ISSN) 18732909 (eISSN)

Vol. 142 105782

Subject Categories

Other Environmental Engineering

Bioenergy

Energy Systems

DOI

10.1016/j.biombioe.2020.105782

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Latest update

1/4/2021 1