Request for Proposals - Biomass Systems Value Chain Modelling

Request for Proposals relating to this project are now closed:
Biomass Systems Value Chain Modelling Flexible Research Project
Biomass is a flexible resource, capable of conversion to heat, power, and transport fuel energy vectors (as well as bio-materials).  While there is a significant potential to increase biomass production through land-use changes of lower grade land in the UK, the prioritisation of biomass use, and requisite technology set to exploit is not clear.  Biomass produced in the UK could provide up to 10% of UK Energy in 2050.  While the sustainability issues involved in land-use changes and greatly increased UK biomass production are being analysed in other bioenergy projects; this project is focussed on developing a framework to assess differing bioenergy processing and conversion technology options.
The appropriate mix of biomass crops, processing routes and end-uses in the UK will be driven strongly by the specific UK situation.  The overall contribution of different approaches to energy affordability, security and greenhouse gas emissions targets needs to be assessed within the context of the whole UK economy and not just against specific substitutions – we need to use our resource potential in the highest impact way.  At this level the different drivers can be resolved into cost of energy, cost of security and marginal cost of greenhouse gas reductions.
Biomass is an inherently distributed resource and the analysis needs to address crop chose based on local agronomic factors and also the collection, processing, transmission and distribution system that makes energy available to end users where they live and work.  Any analytical approach needs to represent this degree of choice and spatial distribution in an effective way, which is a challenging problem.