Sustainability and circularity assessment of biomass-based energy supply chain

Abstract

Climate change and other environmental consequences of socio-economic activities require a more sustainable and circular growth. At the same time, the limitation of the earth resource demands industries to improve resource efficiency and increase the rate of recycling of materials. There are several sustainable and circular alternatives that the industries may adopt. However, the question is that among these alternatives, which one should be selected for implementation for the highest sustainable and circular benefits. This study introduces a novel tool for assessing the sustainability and circularity of biomass-based energy supply chains, integrating multi-criteria decision-making methods with life cycle thinking approach. It evaluates five alternatives using a sustainability and circularity indicators, offering new insights into the deloyment of circular business models at companies in biomass-based energy supply chain. The tool is also applied to a specific rice straw supply chain in Italy, to assess the sustainability and circularity of five alternatives and outrank them. The results indicated that not all the alternatives are better in terms of supporting sustainable development and circular economy, compared to the baseline business model. In this supply chain, the extended lifetime for digestate from the aerobic digestion plant is the most ‘sustainable and circular’ alternative, while the capture of carbon dioxide from the same plant and its use for microalgae cultivation is the least ‘sustainable and circular’ alternative. A sensitivity analysis was conducted on different weighting sets during the assessment. It indicated that the priority of the decision makers can slightly change the outrank of the alternatives and the magnitude of the outranks.