Economic Evaluation of Large-Scale Biorefinery Deployment: A Framework Integrating Dynamic Biomass Market and Techno-Economic Models
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Biofuels and biochemicals play significant roles in the transition towards a fossil-free society. However, large-scale biorefineries are not yet cost-competitive with their fossil-fuel counterparts, and it is important to identify biorefinery concepts with high economic performance. For evaluating early-stage biorefinery concepts, one needs to consider not only the technical performance and process costs but also the economic performance of the full supply chain and the impacts on feedstock and product markets. This article presents and demonstrates a conceptual interdisciplinary framework that can constitute the basis for evaluations of the full supply-chain performance of biorefinery concepts. This framework considers the competition for biomass across sectors, assumes exogenous end-use product demand, and incorporates various geographical and technical constraints. The framework is demonstrated empirically through a case study of a sawmill-integrated biorefinery producing liquefied biomethane from forestry and forest industry residues. The case study results illustrate that acknowledging biomass market effects in the supply chain evaluation implies changes in both biomass prices and the allocation of biomass across sectors. The proposed framework should facilitate the identification of biorefinery concepts with a high economic performance which are robust to feedstock price changes caused by the increase in biomass demand.
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Currently, the operation of industrial scale biorefineries is not economically viable compared to fossil fuel equivalents.
“Currently, the operation of industrial scale biorefineries is not economically viable compared to fossil fuel equivalents [148].”
From Food Waste Biorefinery: Pathway towards Circular Bioeconomy (2021) · cites this paper as [148]
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- Authors
- Zetterholm, J., Bryngemark, E., Ahlström, J., Söderholm, P., Harvey, S., & Wetterlund, E.
- Affiliations
- Luleå University of Technology (SE)
- Chalmers University of Technology (SE)
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (AT)
- Corresponding author
- Zetterholm, Jonas
- ORCID
- Venue
- Sustainability
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2020-07-14
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 17
- Pages
- 7126-7126
- ISSN
- 2071-1050 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3043374967
- Cited by
- 100
- References
- 76
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 7.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Sustainability (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Preprints.org (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- IIASA PURE (International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis) (acceptedVersion)
- KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Chalmers Research (Chalmers University of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Energimyndigheten (Bio4Energy)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanics of Materials › Forest Biomass Utilization and Management
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › General Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Bioeconomy and Sustainability Development
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Biofuel production and bioconversion
- Keywords
- economic evaluation, supply chain performance, techno-economic analysis, forest residues, biomass prices, biofuels, biochemicals
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