Bioenergy Hubs for Northern Communities: Sourcing, Logistics, Distribution, and System Integration

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Energy supply to northern communities is one of the major challenges for Canada in the 21st century. From one hand, the local and federal governments aim at populating the north due to sovereignty concerns and the emerging demand for northern natural resources. On the other hand, maintaining and improving the quality of life for northern residents and the protection of the environment has faced many obstacles. In case of energy supply, in the absence of electric grids, diesel is the main source of energy in the north. It is shipped over a long distance by trucks from the southern cities during the summer as the connecting roads will be covered with ice in the winter. This routine poses many challenges in terms of energy security (lack of diversity and risk of shortage) and greenhouse gas emissions (from transport and diesel combustion). A transition to renewable energy sources could provide a solution to addressing the above challenges. Among these sources, bioenergy, and in particular biomass, shows a great potential for applications in northern communities due to its abundance in Canada (from forestry, agriculture, and municipal solid waste), ease of storage, and a shorter distance between the potential points of supply and the northern communities. Access to a variety of available biomass-to-energy conversion technologies (such as biomass boilers) as well as their lower carbon inventories adds to the above benefits. The main barrier to such a transition (mainly from an economy of scale perspective) is the fact that these communities are small and geographically dispersed. As such, the proposed discovery program advocates the creation of bioenergy hubs in the north to address the issue of scale and dispersion in energy supply. An integrated bioenergy supply system is envisioned consisting of sourcing, logistics, and energy distribution components. Theoretically, this integration poses a hierarchical decision making problem, with sourcing, logistics, and distribution models having joint decision spaces. In this sense, the solutions from the distribution model will serve as boundary conditions for the logistics model. The solutions from the logistics model will also create boundary conditions for the sourcing model. In this sense, we have to deal with an MPEC problem, Mathematical Programming with Equilibrium Constraints, to coordinate these solutions. As such, there is a need to develop a MPEC solution approach specially crafted for the above discussed hierarchical bioenergy supply chain decisions. The proposed 5-year research program fosters research collaborations and invests on training of highly qualified PhD and MSc students recruited in line with the above phases. This program will also pave the path for future engage and strategic partnerships under the NSERC target area of “Natural Resources and Energy - Bioenergy and Bio-products” with an emphasis on “Northern Communities”.