Regional renewable energy and resource planning

The exploitation of the energy potential in biomass in a specific geographical region is frequently constrained by high production costs and the amount of land required per unit of energy generated. In addition, the distributed nature of the biomass resource and its normally low energy density may result in large transportation costs. Biomass also requires large land areas to collect and process the incoming solar radiation before the energy can be harvested. Previously published works on regional energy clustering (REC) and the Regional Resources Management Composite Curve, RRMCC (in this paper shortened to RMC), have been extended in this paper to tackle simultaneously the issues of the biomass supply chain, transportation, and land use. The RMC is a tool for supporting decision making in regional resource management. It provides a complete view of energy and land availability in a region, displaying their trade-offs in a single plot. The extension presented in this work has been developed in two steps. The first step presents the Regional Energy Cascade Analysis, which estimates the energy target within regional supply chains and provides the result for energy exchange flows between zones, the quantity of energy required to be imported/exported, and the locations of the demands. In the second step, the initial results are analysed against potential measures for improving the energy and land use targets by using the RMC and a set of rules for its manipulation. The presented method provides the option to assess the priorities: either to produce and sell the surplus energy on the fuel market or use the land for other purposes such as food production. This extended approach is illustrated with a comprehensive case study demonstrating that with the RMC application it is possible to maximise the land use and to maximise the biofuel production for the requested energy demand.     

Assessment of the technological development and economic potential of photobioreactors

In this paper, we investigate the development and economic potential of the photobioreactor (PBR) technology for energy purposes, i.e. production of hydrogen or biofuels. The approach adopted is to consider the technology, its expected costs and revenues, and related risks from an investor perspective. To this end we develop an investment model that is used to calculate the economic feasibility of PBRs for different scenarios, including a best-case scenario, with plenty of sunlight and water, inexpensive nutrients, high prices for hydrogen and biomass, and low other costs. The best-case scenario is compared to a scenario with less favorable boundary conditions. We find that PBR efficiencies will likely be less than 10%, with typical values between 1.8% and 5.6%. We also find that hydrogen production costs would be lower than those for biodiesel or biogas from solid biomass produced in PBRs. Compared to biofuels from traditional agriculture there is a great advantage for the PBR technology if land is scarce, because land is used more efficiently. Since PBRs can be designed as a closed system they can be applied in very dry regions. In the long term this might enable this promising concept to penetrate the energy supply market.     

Effects of land use and transportation policies on the spatial distribution of urban energy consumption in Brazil

We evaluate the spatial effects of urban land use and transportation policies on energy consumption in the Brazilian economy. The model developed in this paper treats as endogenous the urban spatial distribution of residential location, structure density, commuting behavior, and energy use, facilitating a general equilibrium energy accounting of policies affecting transportation costs or land use. We calibrate this model with respect to five monocentric Brazilian cities in order to assess the implications three distinct policies: a change in the gasoline price, vehicle fuel efficiency regulations, and a change in the price of agricultural land. Gasoline price increases reduce energy consumption directly though reduced commuting and indirectly through higher residential density. On the other hand, while fuel efficiency regulations reduce energy consumption in total, the direct effect is somewhat offset by the indirect effect of sprawl which increases energy consumption. Increases to the price of agricultural land increase the energy efficiency of the city by increasing density and shortening commutes.     

Costs of meeting a cellulosic biofuel mandate with perennial energy crops: Implications for policy

We develop an analytical framework to examine the extent to which farmers' risk and time preferences, availability of credit to cover establishment cost, and subsidized crop insurance for conventional crops influence the decision to allocate land to a perennial energy crop and affect the costs of meeting a biofuel mandate using this crop as feedstock and its implications for the effectiveness of two alternative policies to supplement the mandate: an establishment cost subsidy and subsidized energy crop insurance. We examine the design of these policies to minimize the total (public and private) costs for meeting a one-billion-gallon biofuel mandate by using miscanthus as feedstock. We find that a high degree of risk aversion, high discount rate, credit constraint, and availability of crop insurance for conventional crops can increase the cost of producing enough biomass for a one-billion-gallon biofuel mandate by up to 43% and increase the land required by 16% as compared to otherwise; removal of subsidized crop insurance and credit constraints could lower these costs by 50%. We find that in most cases the cost-effective energy crop insurance subsidy rate is 0% whereas the cost-effective establishment cost subsidy rate is 100%. Relative to the case with no policy intervention for energy crops, energy crop insurance can reduce the total costs (net of government expenditures on subsidies) of meeting the 1 billion gallon mandate by 1.3% whereas establishment cost subsidy can reduce these costs by 34%.     

Competition between biomass and food production in the presence of energy policies: a partial equilibrium analysis

Bioenergy has several advantages over fossil fuels. For example, it delivers energy at low net CO₂ emission levels and contributes to sustaining future energy supplies. The concern, however, is that an increase in biomass plantations will reduce the land available for agricultural production. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of taxing conventional electricity production or carbon use in combination with subsidizing biomass or bioelectricity production on the production of biomass and agricultural commodities and on the share of bioelectricity in total electricity production. We develop a partial equilibrium model to illustrate some of the potential impacts of these policies on greenhouse gas emissions, land reallocation and food and electricity prices. As a case study, we use data for Poland, which has a large potential for biomass production. Results show that combining a conventional electricity tax of 10% with a 25% subsidy on bioelectricity production increases the share of bioelectricity to 7.5%. Under this policy regime, biomass as well as agricultural production increase. A carbon tax that gives equal net tax yields, has better environmental results, however, at higher welfare costs and resulting in 1% to 4% reduction of agricultural production.     

The energy forestry production systems

When growing and using energy forests a long chain of steps is taken: choice of site, site characterization, amelioration, choice of plant material and spacing, land preparation, planting, management, harvest and handling, transport, conversion, production of hot water and electricity.

The economics of energy forestry must be improved to make the whole concept viable. Although the economics need strengthening, it has been agreed that energy forestry is one of the most promising alternatives to cereal crops on farm land. There are two main ways to improve the economics: to increase production of stemwood per area and time, and to lower the costs of production. Good achievements along these routes have been reached over the last three years. Improving each step in growing is being achieved gradually. Lowering the costs is a more stepwise process, for example as was the case when a modified maize harvester proved to work surprisingly well as an energy forestry harvester.

Introductary work done during the three-year period indicates that expert systems or decision support systems may play an important role to share and use the knowledge on energy forestry production systems. For immediate use, a handbook on how to grow short rotation forests has been made published.     

Bioenergy villages in Germany: Bringing a low carbon energy supply for rural areas into practice

An increasing number of rural municipalities wants to meet their entire energy demand with biomass. This article gives a system analytic view on these “bioenergy villages” by balancing pros (reduction of CO₂ emissions) and cons (increasing costs, land use) using the example of a model municipality in Germany. The results indicate that a 100% energy supply based on biomass from within the boundaries of a rural municipality is technically possible but less reasonable with respect to land use competition and costs of energy supply. Whereas heat and power demand in bioenergy villages can be covered with relatively little land use and to relatively low costs, the production of transport fuel based on energy crops (rape seed) leads to significant negative impacts. For a cost-efficient decarbonization of rural areas it can therefore be recommended to particularly expand the utilization of biomass for heat and power production and to reconsider the transport fuel production.     

Environmental effects of energy crop cultivation in Sweden—II: Economic valuation

In this paper, environmental benefits of the cultivation of perennial energy crops in Sweden, which have been identified and quantified in an earlier paper, are evaluated economically. Several different benefits, ranging from global to site-specific, could be achieved by replacing annual food crops with perennial energy crops. The economic value of these environmental benefits, including reductions in costs to farmers (direct costs) and to society as a whole (external costs), has been estimated to be from US$ 0.1 up to US$ 5/GJ biomass. For comparison, the production costs (excluding transport) of Salix and reed canary grass are about 4.4 and US$ 5.0/GJ, respectively. Purification of waste water in energy crop cultivation has the highest economic value, followed by reduced nutrient leaching through riparian buffer strips, recirculation of sewage sludge, and reduced wind erosion through shelter belts consisting of Salix. The value of other environmental benefits is estimated to be less than US$ 0.7/GJ. If 200,000 ha of Sweden’s totally available arable land of 2.8 Mha were available for energy crop cultivation, around 45 PJ biomass could theoretically be produced per year, at an average cost of about US$ 0.7/GJ, including the value of environmental benefits. It is assumed that priority is given to cultivations with the highest total value, as several different environmental effects could be achieved on the same cultivation site. If 800,000 ha were to be available, the corresponding cost of some 150 GJ biomass per year would be around US$ 2.8/GJ.     

Constructing a new business model for fermentative hydrogen production from wastewater treatment

The development of hydrogen energy as a sustainable energy resource is essential for mitigating climate change. The primary challenge to the commercialization of hydrogen energy, relative to that of petrochemical fuels, is cost. Therefore, an innovative business model that converts the costs of procuring biomass into revenue via the production of hydrogen was developed. Profitable hydrogen production can typically be realized by lowering costs through continuous technological development and increasing scale. Feedstock procurement costs, however, limit the cost/benefit reduction flexibility. This study employs biowaste material as feedstock for biological fermentative hydrogen production. This model extends the hydrogen production value chain to include the income from biomass hydrogen production as well as the revenue from processing biowaste and reduced fuel source costs. This study investigates the costs involved in the commercialization of the hydrogen fermentation process, develops an innovative business model, and presents a case study to describe this model.     

Modeling noise and lease soft costs improves wind farm design and cost-of-energy predictions

The Department of Energy uses the metric Cost-of-Energy to assess the financial viability of wind farms. Non-hardware costs, termed soft costs, make up approximately 21% of total cost for a land-based farm, yet are only represented with general assumptions in models of Cost-of-Energy. This work replaces these assumptions with a probabilistic model of the costs of land lease and noise disturbance compensation, which is incorporated into a wind-farm-layout-optimization-under-uncertainty model. These realistic representations are applied to an Iowa land area with real land boundaries and house locations to accentuate the challenges of accommodating landowners. The paper also investigates and removes a common but unnecessary term that overestimates cost-savings from installing multiple turbines. These three contributions combine to produce COE estimates in-line with industry data, replacing “soft” assumptions with specific parameters, identify noise and risk concerns prohibitive to the development of profitable wind farm. The model predicts COEs remarkably close to real-world costs. Wind energy policy-makers can use this model to promote new areas of soft-cost-focused research.     

Simulating the impact of biofuel development on country-wide land-use change in India

India’s growing population and economy generate an increasing demand for energy. Facing the decline of global fossil fuel resources, the Indian government and energy industry are considering the long-term expansion of biofuel production in order to increase energy security. This development leads to a strong competition of energy crops versus food crops for land and may result in an increasing pressure on natural resources. In a pilot scenario study, the LandSHIFT model is applied to assess the impact of biofuel production on land-use change in India up to the year 2030. The model aims at the spatially explicit simulation of land-use change and its relation to other global change processes on the national up to the global scale. It explicitly addresses competition between land-use activities such as human settlement, biofuel production and food production as well as the resulting effects on the spatial extent of natural land. Baseline of the study is a simulation with drivers from the “Order from Strength” scenario of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. To illustrate the consequences of expanded biofuel production for the extent of natural land, we calculate three scenarios of bioethanol production to substitute 5%, 10% and 20% of the expected petrol demand in 2030. In the simulations shown, a comprehensive linkage is made between driving forces (such as population change) and policies (such as biofuel usage) that will affect land-use change over the coming decades.     

Modelling the costs of energy crops: A case study of US corn and Brazilian sugar cane

High crude oil prices, uncertainties about the consequences of climate change and the eventual decline of conventional oil production raise the prospects of alternative fuels, such as biofuels. This paper describes a simple probabilistic model of the costs of energy crops, drawing on the user's degree of belief about a series of parameters as an input. This forward-looking analysis quantifies the effects of production constraints and experience on the costs of corn and sugar cane, which can then be converted to bioethanol. Land is a limited and heterogeneous resource: the crop cost model builds on the marginal land suitability, which is assumed to decrease as more land is taken into production, driving down the marginal crop yield. Also, the maximum achievable yield is increased over time by technological change, while the yield gap between the actual yield and the maximum yield decreases through improved management practices. The results show large uncertainties in the future costs of producing corn and sugar cane, with a 90% confidence interval of 2.9–7.2$/GJ in 2030 for marginal corn costs, and 1.5–2.5$/GJ in 2030 for marginal sugar cane costs. The influence of each parameter on these supply costs is examined.     

An integrated assessment of a large-scale biodiesel production in Italy: Killing several birds with one stone?

Biofuels are often presented as a contribution towards the solution of the problems related to our strong dependency on fossil fuels, i.e. greenhouse effect, energy dependency, urban pollution, besides being a way to support rural development. In this paper, an integrated assessment approach is employed to discuss the social desirability of a large-scale biodiesel production in Italy, taking into account social, environmental and economic factors. The conclusion is that the advantages in terms of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, energy dependency and urban pollution would be very modest. The small benefits would not be enough to offset the huge costs in terms of land requirement: if the target of the European Directive 2003/30/EC were reached (5.75% of the energy used for transport by 2010) the equivalent of about one-third of the Italian agricultural land would be needed. The consequences would be a considerable increase in food imports and large environmental impacts in the agricultural phase. Also, since biodiesel must be de-taxed in order to make it competitive with oil-derived diesel, the Italian energy revenues would be reduced. In the end, rural development remains the only sound reason to promote biodiesel, but even for this objective other strategies look more advisable, like supporting organic agriculture.     

Sugar-ethanol-electricity co-generation in Hawai’i: An application of linear programming (LP) for optimizing strategies

This research develops a linear programming (LP) model to assess various options for sugar and biofuel production from sugarcane and other feedstock in Hawaii. More specifically, the study focuses on finding optimal sugar and biomass feedstock that would maximize producer profits in the production of sugar, ethanol and electricity. Feedstock included in the model were sugarcane, banagrass, energy cane and sweet sorghum. Given available land resources for growing energy crops on the island of Maui, four land resource scenarios were considered. If available land resources were used in the production of sugarcane and energy crops with added utilization of non-prime lands, Hawaii's ethanol goal for year 2020 could be achieved while maintaining two-thirds of Hawaii's current sugar production. Crop yields and unit production costs are key factors in determining optimal quantities of feedstock in the optimization model tested in this study.     

Biomass production potentials in Central and Eastern Europe under different scenarios

A methodology for the assessment of biomass potentials was developed and applied to Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC). Biomass resources considered are agricultural residues, forestry residues, and wood from surplus forest and biomass from energy crops. Only land that is not needed for food and feed production is considered as available for the production of energy crops. Five scenarios were built to depict the influences of different factors on biomass potentials and costs. Scenarios, with a domination of current level of agricultural production or ecological production systems, show the smallest biomass potentials of 2–5.7 EJ for all CEEC. Highest potentials can reach up to 11.7 EJ (85% from energy crops, 12% from residues and 3% from surplus forest wood) when 44 million ha of agricultural land become available for energy crop production. This potential is, however, only realizable under high input production systems and most advanced production technology, best allocation of crop production over all CEEC and by choosing willow as energy crops. The production of lignocellulosic crops, and willow in particular, best combines high biomass production potentials and low biomass production costs. Production costs for willow biomass range from 1.6 to 8.0 €/GJ HHV in the scenario with the highest agricultural productivity and 1.0–4.5 €/GJ HHV in the scenario reflecting the current status of agricultural production. Generally the highest biomass production costs are experienced when ecological agriculture is prevailing and on land with lower quality. In most CEEC, the production potentials are larger than the current energy use in the more favourable scenarios. Bulk of the biomass potential can be produced at costs lower than 2 €/GJ. High potentials combined with the low cost levels gives CEEC major export opportunities.     

Large-scale economic integration of electricity from short-rotation woody crops

This paper presents an assessment of the installation of a large-scale biomass scheme for production of electricity for distribution via the national grid in Spain. The biomass scheme studied is based on woody biomass (eucalyptus, acacia and poplar) as short rotation crops in arable lands. The site selection process has been carried out with a Geographical Information System (GIS). The criteria applied in the selection, cultivation and location of the plantation as well as the biomass power plants have taken into account environmental aspects and the economic costs, always pursuing the lowest energy cost and environmental impacts. The size of each power plant has been calculated taking into account the annual productivity of biomass and the available surface of arable non-irrigated land. The costs of energy crop production in each area have been calculated as well as the storage and transport costs to supply the power plants. The technologies considered for generating electricity are fluidized bed combustion (FBC) and biomass gasification integrated into a combined cycle (BIGCC). The costs of electricity, considering also the connection costs to the electricity grid, have been calculated for all power plants. Cost figures along the fuel cycle have been obtained and a sensitivity analysis of the most relevant variables has been made. The main conclusion of the analysis is that from an economic and environmental point of view, the scheme proposed is feasible.     

Towards an energy management maturity model

Energy management is becoming a priority as organizations strive to reduce energy costs, conform to regulatory requirements, and improve their corporate image. Despite the upsurge of interest in energy management standards, a gap persists between energy management literature and current implementation practices. This gap can be traced to the lack of an incremental improvement roadmap. In this paper we propose an Energy Management Maturity Model that can be used to guide organizations in their energy management implementation efforts to incrementally achieve compliance with energy management standards such as ISO 50001. The proposed maturity model is inspired on the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle approach for continual improvement, and covers well-understood fundamental energy management activities common across energy management texts. The completeness of our proposal is then evaluated by establishing an ontology mapping against ISO 50001.     

Assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies

The non-combustion based renewable electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators and using data obtained from the literature. The indicators used to assess each technology were price of generated electricity, greenhouse gas emissions during full life cycle of the technology, availability of renewable sources, efficiency of energy conversion, land requirements, water consumption and social impacts. The cost of electricity, greenhouse gas emissions and the efficiency of electricity generation were found to have a very wide range for each technology, mainly due to variations in technological options as well as geographical dependence of each renewable energy source. The social impacts were assessed qualitatively based on the major individual impacts discussed in literature. Renewable energy technologies were then ranked against each indicator assuming that indicators have equal importance for sustainable development. It was found that wind power is the most sustainable, followed by hydropower, photovoltaic and then geothermal. Wind power was identified with the lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions, the least water consumption demands and with the most favourable social impacts comparing to other technologies, but requires larger land and has high relative capital costs.     

Assessing of energy policies based on Turkish agriculture:: current status and some implications

In this study, the current energy status of Turkey and the effects of national energy policies on Turkish agricultural support policies are discussed for both current and future requirements. Turkey is an energy-importing country producing 30 mtoe (million tons of oil equivalent) energy but consuming 80 mtoe. The energy import ratio of Turkey is 65–70% and the majority of this import is based on petroleum and natural gas. Furthermore, while world energy demand increases by 1.8% annually, Turkey’s energy demand increases by about 8%. Although energy consumption in agriculture is much lower than the other sectors in Turkey, energy use as both input and output of agricultural sector is a very important issue due to its large agricultural potential and rural area. Total agricultural land area is 27.8 million hectares and about 66.5% of this area is devoted for cereal production. On the other hand, Turkey has over 4 million agricultural farm holdings of which 70–75% is engaged in cereal production. Machinery expenses, mainly diesel, constitute 30–50% of total variable expenses in cereal production costs. It is observed that energy policies pursued in agriculture have been directly affected by diesel prices in Turkey. Therefore, support policy tools for using diesel and electricity in agriculture are being pursued by the Turkish government.     

Renewable energy sources: Their global potential for the first-half of the 21st century at a global level: An integrated approach

The risk of human-induced climate change and the volatility of world oil markets make non-fossil fuel options important. This paper investigates the potential for wind, solar-PV and biomass (WSB) to deliver energy. The focus is on land opportunities and constraints and on production costs as a function of resource availability and depletion and of innovation dynamics. The context is provided by the IPCC SRES scenarios as simulated with the IMAGE 2.2 model. We explicitly consider several sources of uncertainty, aspects of the food vs. energy trade-off and the effects of interaction between the three options through their claims on land. We show that ‘potential production’ concepts are strongly dependent on the chosen land-use scenario—and should therefore be used with an indication of the underlying assumptions. Our results indicate a potential for liquid biofuels in the order of 75–300 EJ year⁻¹ and for electricity from WSB options at production costs below 10 ¢ kWh⁻¹ of 200–300 PWh year⁻¹. Theoretically, future electricity demand can be amply met from WSB sources in most regions by 2050 below 10 ¢ kWh⁻¹, but major uncertainties are the degree to which land is actually available and the rate and extent at which specific investment costs can be reduced. In some regions, competition for land among the three WSB options may significantly reduce the total potential as estimated from simple addition—which is another source of uncertainty.