Biofuels and Sustainable Development

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2018) | Viewed by 5509

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Environmental Risk and Energy Analysis Group, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA
Interests: fossil fuel economics, trade, policy and regulation; electricity economics, generation technologies, R&D and emerging technologies policy and regulation; renewables economics, R&D and emerging technologies, policy and regulation; climate change and greenhouse gases, carbon capture and sequestration; energy-water nexus; energy and the economy; energy security and geopolitics geopolitics of energy; energy data, modeling, and policy analysis; energy efficiency; transportation; energy access energy poverty and equity; sustainable development and distributed energy
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Biofuels are expected to be an important energy source in the “affordable and clean energy” component of the U.N. sustainable development goals. Although global biofuel production has increased tremendously over the last decade, its success in addressing energy, environmental, and economic goals is still under investigation. Greater certainty on their energy, environmental, and economic contributions is needed in order for biofuels to be an important option for meeting the UN sustainable development goals. However, biofuels face considerable headwinds due to recent changes in the global energy market and economy, among other reasons. This Special Issue of Agriculture invites submissions that address various dimensions of biofuels’ potential contribution to reaching the UN sustainable development goals. We invite studies that help understand how the role of biofuels may change with local, regional, and global bio-resources, policies, technologies, and economic conditions, and the importance of these factors in accelerating biofuel deployment across the world. Case studies examining how past biofuels production has—by policy design or side-effect—affected sustainable development goals, and lessons learned towards future sustainable biofuel development would also be valuable. Other studies addressing biofuels development at large are also welcomed.

Dr. Gbadebo Oladosu
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • biofuels
  • clean energy
  • sustainable development
  • policy design
  • technologies
  • future prospects
  • sustainability

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

21 pages, 3815 KiB  
Article
Optimal Level of Woody Biomass Co-Firing with Coal Power Plant Considering Advanced Feedstock Logistics System
by Sangpil Ko and Pasi Lautala
Agriculture 2018, 8(6), 74; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture8060074 - 31 May 2018
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 4883
Abstract
Co-firing from woody biomass feedstock is one of the alternatives toward increased use of renewable feedstock in existing coal power plants. However, the economic level of co-firing at a particular power plant depends on several site-specific factors. Torrefaction has been identified recently as [...] Read more.
Co-firing from woody biomass feedstock is one of the alternatives toward increased use of renewable feedstock in existing coal power plants. However, the economic level of co-firing at a particular power plant depends on several site-specific factors. Torrefaction has been identified recently as a promising biomass pretreatment option to lead to reduction of the feedstock delivered cost, and thus facilitate an increase in the co-firing ratio. In this study, a mixed integer linear program (MILP) is developed to integrate supply chain of co-firing and torrefaction process and find the optimal level of biomass co-firing in terms of minimized transportation and logistics costs, with or without tax credits. A case study of 26 existing coal power plants in three Great Lakes States of the US is used to test the model. The results reveal that torrefaction process can lead to higher levels of co-firing, but without the tax credit, the effect is limited to the low capacity of power plants. The sensitivity analysis shows that co-firing ratio has higher sensitivity to variation in capital and operation costs of torrefaction than to the variation in the transportation and feedstock purchase costs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biofuels and Sustainable Development)
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