Multi-objective optimization of renewable fuel supply chains regarding cost, land use, and water use

Mina Farajiamiri, Jörn-Christian Meyer and Grit Walther

Applied Energy, 2023, vol. 349, issue C, No S0306261923010164

Abstract: Renewable fuels contribute to net zero emissions by replacing fossil fuels in the transportation sector. Nevertheless, there are significant environmental concerns associated with renewable energy development, including land and water usage. This research explores the use of land and water related to large-scale renewable fuel production. We develop a multi-objective mathematical model to determine the optimal supply chain design for the EU's future renewable fuel demand in the transportation sector. We propose a flexible, multi-period, and multi-stage supply chain design that can accommodate multiple feedstocks and multiple products and that takes the seasonality of the resources into account. We consider economic and environmental impacts by minimizing total system costs, land use, and water use. Based on the analysis of the results, we gain insights into conflicting objective functions and the associated trade-offs and synergies to assist decision-makers in selecting an appropriate framework and gaining a better understanding of future opportunities and impacts of renewable fuel production. The outcome demonstrates that, despite not being a desirable alternative in terms of water and land usage, the utilization of energy crops as raw material has economic benefits. As shown by the results, the burden of such a supply chain lies with renewable electricity requirements that could be the capacity bottleneck and require investments. We find that we could achieve a nearly optimal value of land use and water use by increasing total cost by only 10%.

Keywords: Renewable fuels; Supply chain network design; Multi-objective optimization; Land use; Water use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261923010164
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:349:y:2023:i:c:s0306261923010164

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.121652

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().