Research Article

Economic Analysis of Biomass Supply Chains: A Case Study of Four Competing Bioenergy Power Plants in Northwestern Ontario

Table 2

Definition and description of scenarios of cost minimization model.

ScenarioDefinition/description

BASEThe business-as-usual scenario captures the present reality of study area. The parameters used in this scenario are as described in Table 1. This scenario helps compare the model results for the rest of the scenarios.

Economic scenarios

INTCBASE, but 20% increase in biomass truck charge rate. This scenario tests the impact of change in transportation costs on the biomass procurement cost structures which might be the case in future as truck charge rate has recently been increased in NWO.

INPCBASE, but 10% increase in harvesting and processing costs of FHR and UW. This tests the impacts of increased harvesting and processing costs, likely to occur due to changes in economic factors, on procurement cost structures.

DEPCBASE, but 10% decrease in harvesting and processing costs of FHR and UW. This scenario reflects potential improvements in technology in future, thereby reducing the processing costs.

Technological scenarios

INBABASE, but 10% increase in availability of both FHR and UW.
DEBABASE, but 10% decrease in availability of both FHR and UW.
These scenarios test the sensitivity of loosening and tightening of biomass availability constraints. This will help us understand the changes in costs structures over the error margins (±10%) of present estimates of biomass availability for both types as the present estimates of these variables are based on samples of selected areas in FMUs of NWO, which might have the range of errors tested by these scenarios as the present estimates of biomass availability are based on selected sample forest cells. We feel that these estimates need to be improved in future work.

IHR W1BASE, but 10% increase in harvesting factors of both FHR and UW.
IHR W2BASE, but 20% increase in harvesting factors of both FHR and UW.
IHFRBASE, 20% increase in harvesting factor of FHR and no change in harvesting factor of UW.
This set of scenarios tests the impacts of loosening the biomass availability constraints due to improved biomass harvesting technology, likely to happen in future.

DHR WBASE, but 10% decrease in harvesting factors of both FHR and UW.
DHFRBASE, but 20% decrease in harvesting factor of FHR and no change in harvesting factor of UW.
This set of scenarios tests the impacts of tightening the biomass availability, which might occur due to ecological and environmental concerns in future.

IHORBASE, but 20% increase in harvesting factor of FHR, and only FHR is extracted. This scenario explores the situation of increased procurement costs due to present common practice of harvesting only FHR for bioenergy production instead of harvesting both FHR and UW.

INDPBASE, but 10% increase in woody biomass feedstock demand. This explores the impacts of higher biomass demand, likely to happen due to expansion of power plants in future, on cost structures of biomass procurement.

DEDPBASE, but 10% decrease in woody biomass feedstock demand of each of the four power plants. This scenario helps understand the costs structures due to loosening of constraints on the biomass feedstock demand of power plants, which might be the case in future. Selection of higher quality biomass and plants not operating in full capacity leads to lesser biomass demands.