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

向北部社区供应能源是加拿大在21世纪面临的主要挑战之一。一方面，由于对主权的担忧和对北方自然资源的新需求，地方政府和联邦政府的目标是让北方人口增加。另一方面，保持和提高北方居民的生活质量和环境保护面临着许多障碍。在能源供应方面，在没有电网的情况下，柴油是北方的主要能源。夏天，它由卡车从南方城市长途运输过来，因为冬天连接的道路会被冰覆盖。这一惯例在能源安全(缺乏多样性和短缺风险)和温室气体排放(运输和柴油燃烧)方面提出了许多挑战。向可再生能源的过渡可以提供解决上述挑战的办法。在这些来源中，生物能源，特别是生物质，在北部社区显示出巨大的应用潜力，因为它在加拿大丰富(来自林业、农业和城市固体废物)，易于储存，潜在的供应点和北部社区之间的距离更短。获得各种可用的生物质转化为能源的技术(如生物质锅炉)及其较低的碳库存增加了上述好处。这种过渡的主要障碍(主要是从规模经济的角度来看)是这样一个事实，即这些社区规模小，地理上分散。因此，拟议的发现计划倡导在北部建立生物能源枢纽，以解决能源供应的规模和分散问题。设想了一个由来源、物流和能源分配组件组成的综合生物能源供应系统。从理论上讲，这种集成提出了一个分层决策问题，采购、物流和分销模型具有联合决策空间。从这个意义上讲，配送模型的解将作为物流模型的边界条件。来自物流模型的解决方案还将为采购模型创建边界条件。在这个意义上，我们必须处理一个MPEC问题，即带有平衡约束的数学规划，以协调这些解。因此，需要开发一种专门为上述分级生物能源供应链决策而设计的MPEC解决方案方法。拟议的五年研究计划促进研究合作，并投资于按照上述阶段招收的高素质博士和硕士学生的培训。该计划还将为NSERC目标领域“自然资源和能源--生物能源和生物产品”下的未来接触和战略伙伴关系铺平道路，重点是“北方社区”。

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".