Priorities for the sustainability criteria of biomass supply chains for energy

Abstract

The sustainability of biomass supply chains is a topic of significant debate, given its importance in the emerging bioeconomic context. This study aims to identify the criteria perceived to have the highest preference when evaluating the sustainability of biomass supply chains. The data includes the assessments of 122 international experts providing their evaluations through a questionnaire distributed between November 2019 and February 2020. The questionnaire presents pairwise comparisons of 12 sustainability sub-criteria organised into economic, social, and environmental categories. The results are analysed using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in combination with kernel methods to identify consensus regions in the experts’ assessments. The responses showed that a large majority of experts belong to two distinct priority groups: an environmental oriented group (N = 78) and an economic oriented group (N = 21). The environmental-priority provided average weights of 22% to economic criteria, 22% to social criteria, and 56% to environmental criteria (highest priority); whereas the economic-priority group of experts assigned weights of 64% to economic criteria (highest priority), 13% to social criteria, and 23% to environmental criteria. Variations in the priorities were explained by the experts' contextual factors and backgrounds. In both groups, however, there was a consensus to prioritize the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions among environmental criteria, and revitalization of rural areas among social criteria. The results and methods proposed have broad applications in policy making, particularly in the comprehensive assessment of biomass feedstocks and supply chains, providing valuable insights for sustainable decision-making.