Co-firing of solid biomass in existing large scale coal power plants has been supported in many countries as a short-term means to decrease CO 2 emissions and rapidly increase renewable energy shares. However, many countries face challenges guaranteeing sufficient amounts of biomass through reliable domestic biomass supply chains and resort to international supply chains. Within this frame, novel pre-treatment technologies, particularly pelletization and torrefaction, emerged in recent years to facilitate logistics by improving the durability and the energy density of solid biomass. This paper aims to evaluate these pre-treatment technologies from a techno-economic and environmental point of view for two reference coal power plants located in Great Britain and in Italy. Logistics costs and carbon emissions are modelled for both international and domestic biomass supply chains. The impact of pre-treatment technologies on carbon emission avoidance costs is evaluated. It is demonstrated that, for both cases, pre-treatment technologies are hardly viable for domestic supply. However, pretreatment technologies are found to render most international bioenergy supply chains competitive with domestic ones, especially if sourcing areas are located in low labour cost countries. In many cases, pre-treatment technologies are found to guarantee similar CO 2 equivalent emissions performance for international compared to domestic supply chains.

Buses account for almost 60% of the total public transport services in Europe, and most of the vehicles are diesel fuelled. Regional transport administrators, under pressure by governments to introduce zero-emission buses, require analytical tools for identifying optimal solutions. In literature, few models combine location analysis, least cost planning, and emission assessment, taking into account multiple technologies which might achieve emission reduction goals. In this paper, an existing optimal location model for electric urban transport is adapted to match the needs of regional transport. The model, which aims to evaluate well-to-wheel carbon emissions as well as airborne emissions of NOx and PM10, is applied to a real case study of a regional bus transport service in North Eastern Italy. The optimization has identified electric buses with relatively small (60 kWh) batteries as the best compromise for reducing carbon equivalent emissions; however, under current economic conditions in Italy, the life cycle cost of such vehicles is still much higher than those of Euro VI diesel buses. In this context, our model helps in identifying ways to minimize infrastructure costs and to efficiently allocate expensive resources such as electric buses to the routes where the maximum environmental benefit can be achieved.