A Critical Taxonomy of Socio-Economic Studies Around Biomass and Bio-Waste to Energy Projects

Abstract

Since biomass and bio-waste to energy systems condense activities that have important socioeconomic and environmental sustainability effects, it is important that viability and impact studies have a socioeconomic dimension, beyond the techno-economic and institutional aspects. This is necessitated in particular, by the limited and scattered availability of biomass or its residues, links to agricultural and forestry activities and associated socioeconomic sustainability issues like land use, harvesting, transporting and economic conversion plant supplies. Such socioeconomic studies, done prior to the project, can reflect a lot on the feasibility of projects, likely impacts and even help to optimize facility locations, network configurations or fleet management at various points or on the whole the supply chain. When the studies are done in retrospect of the project, as impact studies, they show how bioenergy projects can transform societies. The impact studies can then be useful precursors to similar projects within the same country/region or other similar regions. This review classifies socioeconomic study literature into 'viability' studies-done prior to the project; and 'impact' studies-usually done after the project, except for 'projected impact studies'. The studies are also classified as 'quantitative and systematic' or 'qualitative'. Nonetheless, there are occasional overlaps between these study classes. Intentionally designed integrated approaches could actually give more comprehensive results, although in most cases, they result in complex models. This classification can guide researchers to make the right choice of the socioeconomic study to carry out based on their objectives.

Characterizations of Biomasses for Subsequent Thermochemical Conversion: A Comparative Study of Pine Sawdust and Acacia Tortilis

“…This N content is considerably higher compared to 0.25% in Acacia Holosericea, and in both acacias, S was not detected. Charis et al [10] noted that the pine dust from Zimbabwe has relatively lower N and S contents compared to the Canadian (N: 0.14% and S: 0.01%) and Spanish (N: 0.16%-1.6% and S: 0.14%-0.45%), making it a cleaner thermochemical feedstock [5,7]. In general, the low amounts of N and S in the pine dust and acacia imply that the two biomass types have a lower environmental burden compared to fossil fuels.…”

“…Biomass physicochemical properties are relevant in many ways at various points of a biomass process flow, especially for upstream activities and midstream conversion stages [10]. Figure 1 shows the process flow steps affected by the physicochemical properties of a biomass.…”

A Review of the Application of Gis in Biomass and Solid Waste Supply Chain Optimization: Gaps and Opportunities for Developing Nations

“…Perhaps, the bigger gap in literature is on models that will combine the upstream SC, midstream conversion and downstream distribution modules and be able to simulate various scenarios of plant location (determined using GIS), size and technology choice in one package. However, as Charis et al discuss, such models would require a larger investment in time, a multidisciplinary approach and substantially bigger computational capacities (Charis et al, 2018).…”

Assessing environmental sustainability of projects with different tools. A life cycle perspective.

“…In the sustainability assessment process other qualitative aspects deserve attention, for instance, the debate on sustainable degrowth of environmental impacts and economic paths (Jaeger-erben & Hofmann, 2019;Lorek & Fuchs, 2013;Lorek & Spangenberg, 2014), the crucial role of prevention activities to diminish humans' footprint (Shaw & Williams, 2018), the social aspects (Charis et al, 2018) as well as Universities and academic participation (Qu et al, 2021) and solidarity principles (Gutberlet et al, 2020).…”