International bioenergy transport costs and energy balance (original) (raw)

2005, Biomass and Bioenergy

To supply biomass from production areas to energy importing regions, long distance international transport is necessary, implying more complex logistics, extra costs, energy consumption and material losses compared to local utilisation. A broad variety of supply chains can be envisioned, comprising different biomass production systems, pretreatment and conversion operations, and transport of raw and refined biomass and liquid bio-derived fuels. A tool was developed to consistently compare the wide variety of possible chains and assess the influence of key parameters such as distance, timing and scale. Scenarios for European and Latin American biomass and biomass derived energy carriers delivered to Western Europe were analysed using generic data. The tool also allows for analysis of specific cases. Western European biomass residues and Eastern European crops are delivered at 90 and 70 €/tonne dry (4.7 and 3.7 €/GJ HHV ). South American crops are produced against much lower costs, and despite the long shipping distance, the costs in the receiving harbour can be as low as 40 €/tonne dry or 2.1 €/GJ HHV , the crop's costs still account for 25 -40 % of the delivered costs. The first truck transport from production site to gathering point restricts the size of the production area, therefore a high biomass yield per hectare is vital to enable large scale systems. Use of 300 MW HHV Latin American biomass in BIG/CC plants results in cost of electricity as little as 3.5 €cent/kWh e , competitive with fossil electricity. Methanol produced in Latin America and delivered to Europe costs 6 -8 €/GJ HHV , which is cheaper than when the conversion is done in Europe. The energy requirement for solid biomass from both crops and residues from the different production countries is 1.2 -1.3 MJ primary /MJ delivered (coal ~ 1.

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