The economic sustainability of optimizing feedstock imports with environmental constraints

Abstract

The energetic crisis jeopardizes the safety of nations and people in multiple ways. In addressing the problem of commodity production out of feedstock imports, an eco-environmentally rational agent aims at minimizing the cost of feedstock imports and their increasingly expensive transportation, but also the water footprint of the feedstock production process and the water scarcity in the exporting countries. This implies the need for more accurate feedstock import strategies, that account for the increased multiplicity of factors at play. This study proves the existence of solutions and quantitatively demonstrates that transportation costs and non-uniform feedstock characteristics inhibit feedstock interchangeability, by solving a novel nonlinear program that accounts for the complexity of the factors at play. Moreover, it is shown that the interplay between water footprint and water scarcity across countries can inhibit or foster feedstock interchangeability. Model validation strategies and a sensitivity analysis complete the study.