The Impact of Biomass Amount on Biopower Generation

Abstract

Of the various types of renewable energy technologies being promoted in response to concerns about climate change and energy security, co-firing biomass for electricity is one that is potentially feasible in many states and regions of the USA. This study contributes to our understanding of the factors that influence the economic feasibility of this technology. Using a recently developed spatial evaluation tool we perform sensitivity analyses to investigate how the cost of co-firing biomass is affected by power plant scale, level of biomass used as feedstock, local feedstock availability, transportation costs, and resource and harvesting cost. Specifically, we demonstrate the use of this tool by exploring the cost of co-firing biomass in existing qualified coal-fired power plants in Missouri.

We find that the cost of electricity generated is higher when biomass is cofired under all assumption. However, it finds significant and interesting interaction among the cost-related features. We are able to conclude that abundant and reasonably-priced biomass feedstocks can dramatically increase the feasibility of biopower by reducing transportation costs. Also, the scale of the technology must be right — large enough to exploit economies of scale but small enough to avoid high transportation costs incurred to procure large volumes of feedstocks.

Keywords: biomass, co-firing, biopower, linear programming, sensitivity analysis