BVCM: A comprehensive and flexible toolkit for whole system biomass value chain analysis and optimisation – Mathematical formulation

This paper presents the novel MILP formulation of the Biomass Value Chain Model (BVCM), a comprehensive and flexible optimisation toolkit that models a large number of bioenergy system pathways. The model accounts for the economic and environmental impacts associated with the end-to-end elements of a pathway: crop production, conversion technologies, transport, storage, local purchase, import (from abroad), sale and disposal of resources, as well as CO2 sequestration by CCS technologies and forestry. It supports decision-making around optimal use of land, biomass resources and technologies with respect to different objectives, scenarios and constraints. Objectives include minimising cost, maximising profit, minimising GHG emissions, maximising energy/exergy production or any combination of these. These objectives are combined with a number of scenarios (such as including different CO2 prices, different technology and climate scenarios, import scenarios, waste cost scenarios), different credits (e.g. by-product and end-product, CCS and forestry carbon sequestration) and a number of constraints such as minimum levels of energy production and maximum environmental impacts.