Matching socio-economic and environmental efficiency of wood-residues energy chain: a partial equilibrium model for a case study in Alpine area

Combining the economics and the environmental and social aspects of bioenergy chain implementation is a difficult task, particularly for wood fuel production. Multiple aspects, such as financial analysis, technology development, natural resource exploitation and avoided environmental pollution, must be considered simultaneously. Thus, decision support models seem to be the proper tools for the overall definition of strategies in the wood energy sector. The objective of this study has been to develop a partial equilibrium model able to quantify the socio-economic and environmental effects of policy, technology and best biomass allocation scenarios on the forest residue chain. The model, based on multi-objective linear programming and spatial analysis, considers the financial benefits/losses and the potential trends of three compartments: sawmills, forest enterprises and energy plants. In addition, the model computes avoided emissions for bioheat and bioelectricity production and introduces an impact indicator for the road transport of biomass. Model outputs are defined using a multi criteria approach. The main results stress the importance of both environmental parameters and the implementation of organic Rankine cycle technology for the optimization of the entire bioenergy chain. The model was tested in an Italian Alpine region (province of Trento).