Investment planning and strategic management of sustainable systems for clean power generation: An ε-constraint based multi objective modelling approach

Abstract

Biomass based energy production has been considered as a part of the solution to energy crisis, which is mainly caused by diminishing fossil fuel resources and environmental pollution from traditional fossil fuel based energy production systems. Therefore, it is important to design sustainable and effective systems for biomass based energy production to provide competitive advantage on fossil fuel resourced systems. This study develops a novel optimization model to aid investment planning and strategic management of biomass based clean power generation systems. The model integrates the location, capacity and technology decisions to find the optimal combination of bioenergy production systems to meet electricity demand of particular regions and accounts for multiple biomass types and power technologies. The modelling approach and data analysis are presented to outline the important characteristics of the problem for minimization of the supply chain cost and minimization of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions simultaneously. To handle the multi objective problem efficiently, an integrated approach based on fuzzy decision making and ε-constraint method is proposed and used, considering both sustainability aspects and uncertainties in the system parameters. The viability of the proposed approach is explored on a case study of İzmir region in Turkey. Different supply chain configuration alternatives are provided for the case study region considering various weights for objective functions representing relative importance of each objective. Corresponding supply chain performance measures in terms of total cost and GHG emissions are proposed and discussed for each configuration alternative. Further enviro-economic analyses denote that discounted investment cost and GHG emissions associated with energy production activities receive the biggest shares in the total cost and in the total GHG emissions, respectively. The government and private investors can employ the model and solution algorithm to design the most cost effective and environment friendly supply chain, to monitor the economic and environmental performance of the current biomass based supply chains and identify policies to support a viable, profitable and eco-friendly energy industry.