"Techno-economic evaluations of various Biomass CHP technologies and policy measures under Norwegian conditions"
The Norwegian government is aiming for carbon-neutrality by year 2030 and to reduce the annual greenhouse gas emissions by 15–17 million tons of CO2 -equivalents by 2020, including carbon uptake in forests. Under this context, current biomass for bioenergy use in Norway is about 15 TWh and the Norwegian government aims at doubling the bioenergy use in Norway from 14 TWh in 2008 to 28 TWh in 2020. In the current scenario of bioenergy use, the majority of the consumption is in the heating area (mainly wood stoves and closed fireplaces) and half of the increase was expected to come in this area. Bioenergy use in the wood processing industry was not expected to increase much, and the remaining bioenergy increase was expected to come mainly in the district heating sector. Under these framework conditions, to meet the stringent target and to become more energy efficient and to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by the use of bioenergy, there is a need of assessing bioenergy technologies for heat, and power. This work deals with evaluations of different possible cost-effective small-scale CHP solutions based on biomass for the Norwegian market. Many CHP technologies and systems exist and can easily be proposed as candidates for introduction and/or widespread use in the Norwegian market. However, today they may be far from cost-effective given the current energy market and framework situation. These constraints can, however, change relatively fast. Hence, it is important to evaluate the feasibility of small-scale CHP technologies and systems in this perspective. What will the most promising small-scale CHP technologies based on biomass be in the near to medium term future? What are the limiting factors? What can be done to speed up the introduction of small-scale CHP solutions based on biomass in the Norwegian market? This work evaluates techno-economics of various CHP solutions based on biomass in the Norwegian market. Traditional financial indicators such as FIRR and NPV are used to assess the solutions. The methodology includes the following sequential steps: estimation of the economic production costs of various options for biomass CHP for power and heat generation and sorting these options in ascending order of costs to present the supply curve to meet the national target. Finally, analyse various incentive schemes:
1 Feed-in tariffs/green certificates
2 Investment based tax exemptions, 8 years (for each technology)
3 Prolonged tax exemption, +5 years (for each technology)
4 Investment subsidies (in % for each technology)
5 Low-interest loans (decided for each technology)
This work is connected to the competence building project:
KRAV (Enabling small-scale biomass CHP in Norway; 2008-2012), funded by the Research Council of Norway, SINTEF Energy Research and five industry partners.
