Integrated multi-level bioenergy supply chain modelling applied to sugarcane biorefineries in South Africa

摘要

Bioenergy is expected to play a significant role in future energy mixes worldwide, especially to tackle a range of environmental issues in developing regions. However, as a complex system, bioenergy involves interacting sustainability and economic issues across multiple levels e.g. strategic goals at the supply chain level and the motivation of individual stakeholders. Thus sustainable design of bioenergy supply chains from whole-system perspectives is needed, taking into account multi-level stakeholders involved, from the industries and the governments to the final customers and land owners. This study presents a bioenergy system modelling toolkit, soft-linking an agent based model with an optimisation model to support the value chain design in a multilevel, multi-objective and multi-stakeholder context. The functionality of the developed decision-making tool has been demonstrated by modelling a South African sugarcane biorefineries case.