(658b) Optimal Design of Biomass Supply Chain for Deploying Bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) in the UK

The UK drafted the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change under the UN negotiations in December 2015, which aims to limit warming to well below 2 °C. The UK’s 2050 target is to reduce emissions at least 80% from those of 1990, and options for zero CO2 emissions include greenhouse gas removals from afforestation, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and wood in construction. Among them, BECCS is reported to produce 50TWh/yr of power generation with -47 Mt CO2e in 2050 by the Committee on Climate Change in the UK. BECCS deployment is achievable by 2030 since it could be cost competitive by 2030s. Both domestic and international feedstocks need to be considered. Second generation (2G) biomass, such as miscanthus, short rotation coppice (SRC) and short rotation forestry (SRF) on arable land or grassland sites could provide both greenhouse gas (GHG) emission savings and wider biodiversity. Analysis of the UK Energy Technology Institute suggests a planting rate of 30, 000 hectares per annum for biomass production while converting up to 1,000 hectares of 2G bioenergy crops per annum. Meanwhile, recovering energy from waste wood (e.g. construction and demolition) has been addressed in Waste Strategy for England 2007 to generate electricity and save CO2e emissions simultaneously. In this work, we address the problem of the optimal design of biomass supply chain for deploying BECCS in the UK with a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model. Waste wood, municipal solid waste (MSW), miscanthus and SRF poplar are available to be selected as raw material within the UK. Wood pellets can be imported from international markets to the current available ports under their loading capacities. Possible geographical locations of future power plants, pellet plants and biomass farms are also provided. The total annual cost of the whole supply chain is minimised by choosing the locations of new BECCS power plants and pellet plants subject to the CO2 reduction targets and supply chain constraints associated with the availability of raw materials and mass balances. The key decision variables include raw material supply, pellet production and electricity generation rates, flows of materials between cells and imported pellets, and fuel burn rates. The results indicate that MSW and waste wood are consumed as the basic raw material supplies for the BECCS in the UK from 2025 to 2055 resulting from their low prices. Poplar is preferred over miscanthus as the virgin biomass supply and more BECCS power plants and pellet plants are selected as the CO2 reduction targets increase. Based on this work, no wood pellets need to be imported to the UK to fulfil the carbon emission reduction target for the BECCS during this 30 years.