Combined life cycle and economic assessment of wood based bio fuels in Norway

Abstract

The increasing global demand for energy coupled with decreasing oil-supplies, and increasing risk of adverse climate change due to anthropogenic carbon emissions has created the need for combined economic and environmental assessment. This thesis attempt at devising such a framework based upon Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). These methodologies represent two well established approaches for measuring environmental and economic performance of industrial projects and products. The LCA framework permits introduction of system expansion by interfacing with the greater economy by the hybrid-LCA. This approach also permits the assessment of life-cycle costs within the mathematical structure. The fundamental computations of LCA and LCC are introduced in this text in order to establish the combined assessment framework. This assessment method is applied to two National Renewable Energy Laboratory's studies on bio-ethanol production from lignocellulose. The studies are adapted to Norwegian economic conditions in order to assess the price and emissions of ethanol production from Norwegian wood mass. By combining these performance characteristics, a mitigation price of substituting gasoline with ethanol is established for various plant sizes as well as prices of gasoline.