An increase in the share of renewables in heat supply systems is a promising direction to reach sustainable development goals and decarbonization. Decision makers should consider various factors, including energy market prices, the availability of biofuels, boiler and auxiliary equipment costs, logistic costs, and the taxation system. In the European Union, the energy crisis causes a rapid increase in fossil fuel prices. Moreover, the use of fossil fuels results in greenhouse gas emissions, which threatens the achievement of sustainable development goals. We studied the influence of the delivery cost and the value of environmental tax rates on the levelized cost of heat. Low-capacity boilers (up to 1 MW) and different fossil and renewable fuels were analyzed. An analysis was carried out on the example of Ukraine. The European trends were factored in. The obtained results showed that biofuel boilers had lower levelized costs of heat than fossil fuel boilers. Delivery costs and environmental taxes have a significant impact on heat energy costs.
One of the important directions for achieving the goals of sustainable development and decarbonization is to increase the share of biofuels, including in heat supply systems. In this case, an important factor in deciding on the use of biofuel boilers is the cost of fuel, which is affected by the delivery logistics. The authors determined the impact of logistics for different types of fuel for low-power boilers (0.5 and 1 MW, burning biofuels) on LCOH. The calculations take into account the existing rates of environmental tax. The paper considers the transportation of biofuels by road to small consumers over short distances (within a radius of several hundred kilometers). The study showed that the cost of delivery of pellets from producer to consumer can be up to 20% of their cost. It is established that the transportation of a ton of pellets per 1 km increases the cost of this ton by about 1.35 UAH, therefore, the logistical component in the final cost of pellets can be significant.
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