This paper explores the environmental and economic aspects of fast pyrolytic conversion of lignin, obtained from 2G ethanol plants, to transport fuels for both the marine and automotive markets. Various scenarios are explored, pertaining to aggregation of lignin from several sites, alternative energy carries to replace lignin, transport modalities, and allocation methodology. The results highlight two critical factors that ultimately determine the economic and/or environmental fuel viability. The first factor, the logistics scheme, exhibited the disadvantage of the centralized approach, owing to prohibitively expensive transportation costs of the low energy-dense lignin. Life cycle analysis (LCA) displayed the second critical factor related to alternative energy carrier selection. Natural gas (NG) chosen over additional biomass boosts well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions (WTW GHG) to a level incompatible with the reduction targets set by the U.S. renewable fuel standard (RFS). Adversely, the process' economics revealed higher profits vs. fossil energy carrier.

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The paper assesses the viability of photovoltaic (PV) to be used in northern latitudes as a part of energy supply system for remote nomadic camps of northern communities of indigenous people involved in reindeer husbandry. Two borderline locations were for the analysis: the southern area of Yakutia, Russia, 56°41'N; 120°46'E, and the northernmost area in Norway, Finnmark, 68°51'N; 24°43'E. The analysis involved 16 simulation scenarios based on different energy consumption models, light sources and electric load schedules. It has been shown that under different economic conditions and given fuel prices a PV-based system in all scenarios is beneficial to serve camp needs when compared to solely fuel-based system. The results show incandescent lights, which are currently common for such settlements, should be replaced with LED lighting to enable PV system portability by reindeer sled. For areas with significant minimal solar flux days partial load scheduling is necessary for economically viable systems. The specific weight of the system (excluding support structure) measured as the system total weight to the number of camp residents ratio can be reduced by a factor of two for optimized loads to 5.8 kg/person for a low energy-intensive camps and 11.0 kg/person for a high energy intensive camps.