Techno-economic, Social and Environmental Assessment of Biomass Based District Heating in a Bioenergy Village

Abstract

Bioenergy villages can be defined as villages, municipalities, settlements or communities, which produce and use most of their energy from local bioenergy and other renewable energy sources. A bioenergy village approach has not been applied in Macedonia yet, and it is at a nascent stage of implementation in other South-Eastern European countries. This work aims to integrate a techno-economic, social and environmental assessment and an implementation strategy into a bioenergy village concept, which is not often seen in works dedicated to bioenergy villages and biomass based heating systems. The assessment was conducted by means of energy audit and project-related tools, whilst the strategy was composed by bioenergy working group meetings. Results show that a biomass based district heating system is a more attractive solution for heating several public buildings instead of a fossil fuelled system, with numerous associated benefits. Such concepts can be replicated with variety of renewables, thus contributing to sustainable development pathways of small communities.

Does Social Businesses Development Affect Bioenergy Industry Growth under the Pathway of Sustainable Development?

“…Reference [34] surveys the promotion of entrepreneurial activities to strengthen the national competitiveness of the bioenergy industry, arguing that small and medium scale entrepreneurs accelerate the evaluation of business opportunities offered by cleaner technologies, such as bioenergy solutions. Many studies investigate the role of businesses and enterprises in developing the bioenergy industry-such as [35][36][37].…”

Redevelopment of a manufacturing factory in an energy generation plant with wood biomass

“…In the mountain regions, on the other hand, there is a high availability of wood biomass, often at low cost, and the existing heating plants have a low efficiency. In this context, the exploitation of district heating technologies, combined with heat generators fed by wood biomass, can make a good margin of profit (NPV after twenty years is negative) (Bozhikaliev, et al, 2019). For this purpose, the costs of chip wood provision must remain low and a careful analysis must be performed to verify the boiler room position in the territory and the location where to execute the chipping operations.…”

Rural Application of a Low-Pressure Reverse Osmosis Desalination System Powered by Solar–Photovoltaic Energy for Mexican Arid Zones

“…For the implementation of a socio-technical project that uses renewable energy, it is important to consider several aspects such as technical, social and environmental aspects, among others [17]. Therefore, this technological intervention was developed in four stages considering the aforementioned aspects: (1) characterization of the study area and identification of water user requirements; (2) design and experimental tests of the LPRO-PV system with synthetic water prepared according to the water salinity of the Samalayuca well; (3) installation of the LPRO-PV system on-site; and (4) operation and monitoring of the users' experience with the system for one year.…”