Municipalities Deemed Suitable for Biomass Energy Use in Colombia Under a Multicriteria Analysis and Sustainable Development Perspective

The use of renewable energies is a global strategy to mitigate the acceleration of global warming generated by industrial processes as well as a sustainable way to diversify the energy mix. The objective of this work was to identify municipalities in Colombia where residual biomass from agricultural, livestock and urban sources could potentially be used to generate electricity and heat. We identified these municipalities using a geostatistical model and multicriteria analysis methods (analytical hierarchy process, rank-sum and weighted linear combination), using sustainable development indicators focused on the sector and the energy potential of each biomass source. We proposed two scenarios for site selection. The first scenario was established according to the criteria of experts and professionals in the area (Scenario I: Professional/expert perception), and the second was based on greenhouse gas reduction for the energy sector (Scenario II: Climate action and sustainable development). Under both scenarios, our results identified 127 municipalities are suitable for the use of agricultural residual biomass and 162 for livestock residual biomass. In the case of urban biomass, no municipality supplied sufficient urban biomass energy potential to fulfill its own energy needs according to the criteria established in this study. However, our results suggest that there is potential to develop collective projects, in which the total urban residual biomass collected from several municipalities could be used to generate electricity for all of them, prioritizing the municipalities with less access to electricity service