International trade in biomass for energy is growing and wood pellets have become a very successful internationally traded bioenergy-based commodity. Russian wood pellets have captured an important share of European markets. The wood pellets are mainly transported to European markets by sea. The paper addresses challenges facing wood pellet logistics in Northwest Russia, through the ports of St. Petersburg, Vyborg, and Ust-Luga, focusing on options for seaborne transportation of pellets from producer to consumer from the economic, environmental and regulatory perspectives. The study shows that seaborne transportation of Russian wood pellets faces many constraints and without improvements in all stages of the wood pellet transportation chain through Northwest Russian seaports, the future for Russian wood pellet exports to Europe does not seem promising from the economic and environmental perspectives. Optimal logistics-related decisions require analysis of each specific situation, with detailed study of the investment and production capacities of the individual companies involved. Better knowledge of the respective stages of the wood pellet transportation chain and full consideration of the environmental aspects involved will enable effective optimization actions to be taken. This study represents a starting point for further discussion of possible improvements to seaborne wood pellet transportation to European consumers.

As computing power increases, more complex computational models are utilized for biomass supply system studies. The paper describes three commonly used modeling methods in this context, geographic information systems, life-cycle assessment, and discrete-time simulation and presents bibliometric analysis of work using these three study methods. Of the 498 publications identified in searches of the Scopus and Web of Science databases, 17 reported on combinations of methods: 10 on life-cycle assessment and geographic information systems, six on joint use of life-cycle assessment and discrete-time simulation, and one on use of geographic information systems jointly with discrete-time simulation. While no articles dealt directly with simultaneous use of all three methods, several acknowledged the potential of this. The authors discuss numerous challenges identified in the review that arise in combining methods, among them computational load, the increasing number of assumptions, guaranteeing coherence between the models used, and the large quantities of data required.Discussion of issues such as the complexity of reporting and the need for standard procedures and terms becomes more critical as repositories bring together research materials, including entire models, from various sources. Efforts to mitigate many of modeling's challenges have involved phase-specific modeling and use of such methods as expressions or uncertainty analysis in place of a complex secondary model. The authors conclude that combining modeling methods offer considerable potential for taking more variables into account; improving the results; and benefiting researchers, decision-makers, and operation managers by producing more reliable information.

The supply logistics of energy biomasses generally involves a complex system of supply chains, which aim to achieve timely and cost-efficient feedstock deliveries to biomass demand points. The performance of supply chains is often examined in case studies where spatial data about biomass sources and transportation networks are deployed in varying resolutions and to different geographical extents. In this paper, we have reviewed 94 publications, in which spatial data were used in case studies that focused on analysing and optimising energy biomass supply chains. The reviewed publications were classified into 16 categories, according to the publication year, study methods and objectives, biomass types, supply system complexity and the spatial features of each study area. This review found that the use of geographical information systems in this context has increased in popularity in recent years, and that and the multiformity of the applied methods, study objectives and data sources have increased simultaneously. Another finding was that most of the studies that we reviewed focused on countries in which spatial biomass and transport network data of high quality were unrestrictedly available. Nevertheless, case studies, including spatial data from multiple countries, were represented marginally in the papers that we reviewed. In this paper we also argue that a standard way of reporting geographical contents in biomass case studies should be developed to improve the comprehension and reproducibility of the publications in this field of research.

Even though biomass is characterised as renewable energy, it produces anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially from biomass logistics. Lifecycle assessment (LCA) is used as a tool to quantify the GHG emissions from logistics but in the past the majority of LCAs have been steady-state and linear, when in reality, non-linear and temporal aspects (such as weather conditions, seasonal biomass demand, storage capacity, etc.) also have an important role to play. Thus, the objective of this paper was to optimise the environmental sustainability of forest biomass logistics (in terms of GHG emissions) by introducing the dynamic aspects of the supply chain and using the geographical information system (GIS) and agent-based modelling (ABM). The use of the GIS and ABM adds local conditions to the assessment in order to make the study more relevant. In this study, GIS was used to investigate biomass availability, biomass supply points and the road network around a large-scale combined heat and power plant in Naantali, Finland. Furthermore, the temporal aspects of the supply chain (e.g., seasonal biomass demand and storage capacity) were added using ABM to make the assessment dynamic. Based on the outcomes of the GIS and ABM, a gate-to-gate LCA of the forest biomass supply chain was conducted in order to calculate GHG emissions. In addition to the domestic biomass, we added imported biomass from Riga, Latvia to the fuel mixture in order to investigate the effect of sea transportation on overall GHG emissions. Finally, as a sensitivity check, we studied the real-time measurement of biomass quality and its potential impact on overall logistical GHG emissions. According to the results, biomass logistics incurred GHG emissions ranging from 2.72 to 3.46 kg CO2-eq per MWh, depending on the type of biomass and its origin. On the other hand, having 7% imported biomass in the fuel mixture resulted in a 13% increase in GHG emissions. Finally, the real-time monitoring of biomass quality helped save 2% of the GHG emissions from the overall supply chain. The incorporation of the GIS and ABM helped in assessing the environmental impacts of the forest biomass supply chain in local conditions, and the combined approach looks promising for developing LCAs that are inclusive of the temporal aspects of the supply chain for any specific location.

Oil heating systems are abundant in rural Finland and they need to be replaced by renewable energy as Finland aims to be carbon neutral by 2035. Bioenergy, one of the renewable energies, is a common source of energy in Finland as the country is rich in forest resources. In Finland, combined heat and power plants utilize such resource to produce district heat and electricity but Finnish rural areas do not have access to the district heating network. However, there are potential scenarios where community heating could be possible using portable chip-fired heating systems (heat containers). Ultimately, the cost of heating is an important factor for the consumers and the cost of investment is likely to put off any interest from the communities. In this research, we explored the cost and profitability of heat container investments in rural Finland and examined the challenges for the energy transition away from oil heating systems, as well as the opportunities decentralized biomass-fired heating systems might bring. The results of this research indicate that the price of heat produced in heat containers is comparatively higher than district heating, which is commonly used in cities in Finland, but is cost-competitive compared to oil heating depending on the price of oil. For example, the current price of LFO (~1 EUR/l) generates costlier heat than the 300 kW heat container provides. Firing wood pellets in the heat container is not economically viable due to expensive raw material but smaller-sized heat container (110 kW) firing wood chips could provide cost-competitive heat if uptime is raised to >2700 h/year. There are socio-economic impacts and value-added effects on the rural region due to utilization of local resource instead of imported LFO but there remain challenges and barriers such as high initial investment, low investment support and lack of policies focused on decentralised energy enterprises.