O-09　Technological and Economic Assessment of Woody Biomass Production Cost

Abstract

Energy conversion technology of woody biomass (WB) has attracted attention because of carbon neutral energy. On the other hand, the energy use of WB is not advanced sufficiently since WB power generation costs are higher than grid power generation costs. One of the reasons for high cost of WB power generation are that the WB fuel costs account for more than 50% of the total power generation costs, which is essential to reduce WB production costs in order to expand the use of WB. Costs, life cycle assessment, and technological performance and improvement of WB use have been discussed previously. However, those studies tend to be limited to present technologies and specific areas. Moreover, they have not discussed the impacts of technological improvements and/or introduced technologies to the WB power generation costs. In this study, we focus on the WB production cost, and clarify the correlation of each factor between processes and the impact of each element improvement on power generation costs. We design a WB production process, calculate its cost by a detailed bottom-up approach, and propose technological scenarios to show innovation pathways to utilize WB effectively. We find that it is important to improve the chipping cost and the labor efficiency of timbering, and thus it is suggested that the WB power generation cost can achieve 25 JPY/kWh which is a target cost in this study.