Systematic assessment of triticale‐based biorefinery strategies: investment decisions for sustainable biorefinery business models

Abstract

Strategic investments in biorefinery projects are increasingly being made, and involve non‐traditional decision making, especially considering the technology and market risks involved. From the investor's perspective, the decision‐making process leading to product/process combinations for implementation as a biorefinery to achieve a sustainable business model and good economic returns is not obvious. Typical metrics used for investment decision making have some limitations regarding the recognition of acceptable technology risks relative to economic returns. They often do not appropriately consider factors and analyses related to, for example, environmental impact and the longer term competitive position of new product portfolios. The methodology presented in this article is an approach to identifying a ‘practical’ set of multi‐disciplinary decision‐making criteria to enable the selection of the preferred product/process biorefinery implementation strategy. The case of investment options in the triticale (X Triticosecale Wittmack) biorefinery is used as an example. Through this risk‐based methodology, technology risks as well as economic, environmental, and competitive benefits associated with different business model options are identified. This methodology leads to the development of a series of multi‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM) panels to define a set of practical criteria suitable for a final MCDM for the identification of triticale‐based biorefinery alternatives leading to long‐term and sustainable business models. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Systematic assessment of triticale‐based biorefinery strategies: environmental evaluation using life cycle assessment

“…Straw is pelletized, then extruded in the presence of polypropylene. The conversion routes under study are presented in more detail by Chambost et al …”

“…Feedstock growing, harvesting and transport, raw material production and transport, energy inputs for the production, and emissions from the CHP were included. Energy and raw material inventories were based on process information provided by Chambost . Life‐cycle inventory data for the material and energy involved were extracted from the Ecoinvent 2.2 database.…”

“…Many conversion routes have been developed or adapted for triticale, and there is a particular interest for developing projects in the grain‐growing province of Alberta. A systematic assessment of the economic, competitive, and environmental performances of various candidate biorefinery pathways should be conducted in the early stages of project development to identify the most promising product‐process combinations . Sanaei et al .…”

“…Limiting the number of criteria to be used in a decision‐making activity is important to keep this activity manageable. To reduce the number of environmental criteria while preserving those that are most relevant to the overall project decision‐making context (including economic and market criteria), Chambost et al . proposes the use of initial multi‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM) panels, including one dedicated to environmental criteria as well as others for economic and market criteria.…”

“…The goal of these initial MCDM panels is to identify the most important criteria to evaluate within each aspect. Following the Chambost et al . methodology, the most important criteria of each aspect are then gathered in an overall MCDM with the aim of screening out the less sustainable product‐process combinations considering environmental, economic, and market aspects.…”