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DOE OSTI2022

Conversion of food waste to renewable energy: A techno-economic and environmental assessment

Increasing quantities of food waste have become a concern due to high disposal costs in landfills and high greenhouse gas emissions. With this increase in food waste generation, there is also an increasing demand for renewable natural gas to supplement traditional fossil fuel combustion and offset the impacts of climate change. Collecting food waste from landfills and turning it into renewable natural gas using anaerobic digestion could be a win-win option for both food waste disposal and renewable energy production. While some literature exists on the energy potential, economic feasibility, and environmental benefit of food waste disposal via anaerobic digestion, no existing study simultaneously evaluates the energy, economic and environmental effect of food waste to renewable energy via anaerobic digestion, especially on a plant and city scale. Further, this study is focused on the techno-economic and environmental assessment of food waste to energy via anaerobic digestion in order to fill this gap. Four anaerobic digestion pathways are considered in this study: flare, pipeline natural gas, combined heat and power, and combined cycle for efficient power generation. Using a city of 1M people the results show that renewable natural gas from food waste could supply the natural gas usage for 1.9% of residential use, 2.7% of commercial use, 1.1% of industrial use, 167.5% of the compressed natural gas vehicle fleet, 0.7% of electric power generation, or 2.5% of industrial high-temperature heating processes. All pathways except pipeline natural gas will have a positive net present value in the baseline scenario, and the pipeline natural gas pathway will become economically viable with a net present value of 31 USD/t of food waste with renewable energy credits. Lastly, all of the pathways achieve negative greenhouse gas emissions, which indicates that anaerobic digestion is a more environmentally friendly method for the handling of food waste than landfills.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

DOE OSTI2023

Techno-economic and environmental assessment of solar-based electrical vehicles charging stations integrated with hydrogen production

With the growing interest in adopting both commercial and residential electric vehicles (EVs) utilizing green renewable energy, the techno-economic assessment of EV charging stations with solar energy is a critical aspect of the transition to sustainable transportation. However, battery storage capacity for variable solar energy production is becoming increasingly less cost-effective due to the higher Lithium price. Complementing solar energy production and battery storage, the potential of combining green hydrogen fuel energy integration with solar energy for EV charging stations can provide a sustainable alternative to reach carbon-free transportation. This research aims to assess the technical and economic viability of grid-connected Photovoltaic (PV)-based EV charging stations across Kentucky based on existing EV load profiles. The study considers different PV system sizes, locations, orientations, and the impact of net metering policies and electricity tariffs on the profitability of the PV systems. Further, using excess PV energy, Lithium-Ion batteries will be charged, which will be assessed considering the techno-economic and environmental impacts of green EV charging stations. To further enhance green renewable energy production, we also investigated the feasibility of on-grid PV-based EV charging stations with Lithium-Ion batteries charged during low tariff periods. In comparison with these scenarios, we studied the potential benefits of integrating green hydrogen energy production using excess solar energy with and without governmental incentives. Furthermore, we assess the environmental impact of these green EV charging stations across Kentucky. Our study indicates that EV stations across Kentucky have similar techno-economic feasibility with insignificant deviation in the levelized cost of electricity, payback period, and PV energy fraction with/without Li-Ion batteries. However, with green hydrogen production, the marginal H 2 production cost indicates the first scenario (on-grid PV energy charging) is the most significant, roughly 10 USD/Kg, which is similar to 1.5 times higher than the second (charging during low-tariff periods) and the third scenarios (power grid to satisfy the demand deficit - approximately 6.5 USD/Kg). From the environmental perspective, the second scenario would be a good option for either hybrid EV/H 2 or EV charging stations in Kentucky, factoring in the hydrogen production cost and the carbon footprint.

08 HYDROGEN↗

DOE OSTI2021

Techno-economic analysis and environmental benefits of solar industrial process heating based on parabolic trough collectors

In this work, detailed techno-economic and environmental analyses are conducted for employing a 5 MWt parabolic trough-based solar industrial process heat (SIPH) plant in Salt Lake City, Utah. According to the results, an optimum solar multiple of 1.5 was determined, allowing the plant to generate annual thermal energy of 15389.24 MWth with a capacity factor of 35.1% and levelized cost of heat (LCOH) of $\$ 26.3$/MWth. Considering a 30% investment tax credit and a 30% reduction in the total installed cost could reduce the LCOH to $\$ 19.30$/MWth and $\$ 18.52$/MWth, respectively. Employing parabolic trough collectors could avoid emissions of 3,582,422.47 kg, 147.99 kg, 3,341.66 kg, and 14.32 kg for CO 2 , PM, NOx, and SO 2 , respectively per year compared to a natural gas-based plant. Further, it also caused an annual external cost savings of between $\$ 99,900$ and $\$ 357,004$. Including the external costs in the LCOH analysis shows that the SIPH plant is economically competitive with a natural gas-based plant, further demonstrating its value. A further comparison demonstrated the economic superiority of a parabolic trough-driven IPH plant over a photovoltaic-driven electric boiler plant. In summary, with reducing installed costs and providing incentives, parabolic trough-driven IPH plants will be an economically and environmentally viable option.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2025

Biomass to bio-energy supply chain: Economic viability, case studies, challenges and policy implications in India

Biomass supply chain (BSC) management is an integral part of renewable energy projects, which include biomass-harvesting, collection, storage, processing and transportation to the bio-energy plants. The sustainability concept identifies economy, environment, and society as the three principal pillars of bioenergy. With an effective BSC implemented, all three dimensions of sustainability can be attained. Although, there’s been extensive research on the environmental sustainability of BSC, the economic aspects are under-represented in existing literature. So, an elaborate analysis on the economic viability of BSCs developed worldwide and those in India is critical, and needs to be studied. This review conducts a detailed accounting of the economic aspects of a BSC which includes the existing challenges in designing an environmental-cum-economically efficient BSC and strategies to address the issues. The Indian context has been studied on the BSC models, highlighting their shortcomings, while encapsulating the essential insights from global BSC models for a cost-effective BSC-to-bioenergy in India. Here, this review also emphasizes the policies supporting the BSC in India and forecasts the future biomass demand and supply. This review will provide stakeholders with critical insights on BSC and related challenges and assist them to investigate and devise strategies for successful implementation of BSCs in India.

Biomass↗

DOE OSTI2023

Techno-Economic and life cycle assessment of standalone Single-Stream material recovery facilities in the United states

Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) are crucial players in achieving a circular economy. MRFs receive complex waste streams and separate valuable recyclables from these mixtures. This study conducts techno-economic analysis (TEA) to estimate the net present value (NPV) and life cycle assessment (LCA) to estimate different environmental impacts of a commercial scale standalone, single-stream MRF to assess the economic feasibility and environmental impacts of recovering valuable recyclables from an MRF processing 120,000 tonnes per year (t/y). The TEA employs a discounted cash flow rate of return (DCFROR) analysis over a 20-year facility lifetime, along with a sensitivity analysis on the impact of different operating and economic parameters. Results show that the total fixed cost of building the MRF facility is $\$ $23 MM, and the operating cost is $\$ $45.48/tonne. Further the NPV of the MRF can vary from $\$ $3.57 MM to $\$ $60 MM, while 100-year global warming potential can range from 5.98 to 8.53 kg carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq) per tonne of MSW. We have also found that MSW composition (arising from regional effects) significantly impacts costs, 100-year global warming potential, and other impact categories such as acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ecotoxicity, ozone depletion, photochemical oxidation, carcinogenic effects, and non-carcinogenic effects. Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis indicate that waste composition and market prices significantly impact the profitability of the MRF, and the waste composition mostly impacts global warming potential. Our analysis also indicates that facility capacity, fixed capital cost, and waste tipping fees are vital parameters that affect the economic viability of MRF operations.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2021

Evaluating the economic impact of water scarcity in a changing world

Abstract Water scarcity is dynamic and complex, emerging from the combined influences of climate change, basin-level water resources, and managed systems’ adaptive capacities. Beyond geophysical stressors and responses, it is critical to also consider how multi-sector, multi-scale economic teleconnections mitigate or exacerbate water shortages. Here, we contribute a global-to-basin-scale exploratory analysis of potential water scarcity impacts by linking a global human-Earth system model, a global hydrologic model, and a metric for the loss of economic surplus due to resource shortages. We find that, dependent on scenario assumptions, major hydrologic basins can experience strongly positive or strongly negative economic impacts due to global trade dynamics and market adaptations to regional scarcity. In many cases, market adaptation profoundly magnifies economic uncertainty relative to hydrologic uncertainty. Our analysis finds that impactful scenarios are often combinations of standard scenarios, showcasing that planners cannot presume drivers of uncertainty in complex adaptive systems.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2021

Examining the Economic Optimality of Automatic Generation Control

The automatic generation control (AGC) system is temporally situated between economic dispatch and synchronous generator dynamics, and its primary role is to regulate frequency within and tie-line flows between control areas. Given appropriate choice of participation factors (feed-forward controller gains that govern the disaggregation of the area-level power requirement to individual generators), the AGC can be engineered to nudge system dynamics toward a steady-state operating point corresponding to economic optimality. This paper establishes necessary and sufficient conditions under which a widely accepted choice of participation factors guarantees the alignment of steady-state synchronous generator outputs with a global minimum of a prototypical economic dispatch problem. In so doing, it resolves several ambiguities and formalizes technical assumptions governing the role of the standard AGC architecture in the context of economic dispatch and steady-state operation. Numerical case studies tailored to a modified version of the New England 39-bus 10-machine test system validate the theoretical results.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2020

The Technical and Economic Potential of the H2@Scale Hydrogen Concept within the United States

The U.S. energy system is evolving as society and technologies change. Renewable electricity generation - especially from wind and solar - is growing rapidly, and alternative energy sources are being developed and implemented across the residential, commercial, transportation, and industrial sectors to take advantage of their cost, security, and health benefits. Systemic changes present numerous challenges to grid resiliency and energy affordability, creating a need for synergistic solutions that satisfy multiple applications while yielding system-wide cost and emissions benefits. One such solution is an integrated hydrogen energy system. This is the focus of H2@Scale - a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) initiative led by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Technologies Office. H2@Scale brings together stakeholders to advance affordable hydrogen production, transport, storage, and utilization in multiple energy sectors. The H2@Scale concept involves hydrogen as an energy intermediate. Hydrogen can be produced from various conventional and renewable energy sources including as a responsive load on the electric grid. Hydrogen has many current applications and many more potential applications, such as energy for transportation - used directly in fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), as a feedstock for synthetic fuels, and to upgrade oil and biomass - feedstock for industry (e.g., for ammonia production, metals refining, and other end uses), heat for industry and buildings, and electricity storage. Owing to its flexibility and fungibility, a hydrogen intermediate could link energy sources that have surplus availability to markets that require energy or chemical feedstocks, benefiting both. This document builds upon a growing body of analyses of hydrogen as an energy intermediate by reporting the results from our initial analysis of the potential impacts of the H2@Scale vision by the mid-21 st century for the 48 contiguous U.S. states. Previous estimates have been based on expert elicitation and focused on hydrogen demands. We build upon them, first, by estimating hydrogen’s serviceable consumption potential for possible hydrogen applications and the technical potential for producing hydrogen from various resources. We define the serviceable consumption potential as the quantity of hydrogen that would be consumed to serve the portion of the market that could be captured without considering economics (i.e., if the price of hydrogen were $0/kg over an extended period); thus, it can be considered an upper bound for the size of the market. We define the technical potential as the resource potential constrained by real-world geography and system performance, but not by economics. We then compare the cumulative serviceable consumption potential with the technical potential of a number of possible sources. Second, we estimate economic potential: the quantity of hydrogen at an equilibrium price at which suppliers are willing to sell and consumers are willing to buy the same quantity of hydrogen. We believe this method provides a deeper understanding than was available in the previous analyses. We develop economic potentials for multiple scenarios across various market and technology-advancement assumptions.

08 HYDROGEN↗

DOE OSTI2022

High Yield, Economical and Environmentally Benign Production of Rare Earth Elements from Coal Ash (Phase II Final Summary Report)

Fly ash stored in landfills and ponds across the United States is an attractive, abundant domestic resource for the cost-effective recovery of rare earth elements (REE) and other critical minerals (CM). Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and its team members, Winner Water Services (WWS) and University of Kentucky/Center for Applied Energy Research (UK/CAER) successfully executed a multiphase program that developed technologies and their implementation in a pilot plant. We demonstrated plant operations for cost-effective and environmentally-friendly production of rare earth element oxide (REO) concentrates, and the critical minerals scandium and aluminum (in the forms of salts or oxide products), from coal ash. We also constructed and demonstrated a research-scale (0.5 kg/day) micropilot facility to validate the key physical and chemical processing operations, predict yields, and troubleshoot process bottlenecks. The project team then designed, constructed and operated two decoupled pilot plants: (1) an operational pilot plant for physical separation processes with capacity of 0.4 metric tons per day (tpd), where we optimized processes to produce selected ash fractions as the feedstock for chemical processing and as valuable byproducts such as cenospheres, magnetic ash, and secondary fuel carbon, and (2) an operational pilot plant for chemical ash processing with a capacity of 0.5 tpd that developed optimized processes for the production of: (a) REO concentrates, (b) critical minerals (Sc, Al), and (c) beneficiated ash as a valuable byproduct suitable for cement applications. In Phase I, the project team (with Equinox Chemicals in place of WWS) developed and demonstrated the feasibility of the physical and chemical separation processes, developed the design of a pilot plant, and began the development of a preliminary techno-economic model. In the baseline (initial) Phase II program, the project team developed and demonstrated the above pilot scale plant, producing salable REE concentrates, including Y and Sc (REYSc), plus commercially viable byproducts, using environmentally safe and high-yield physical and chemical enrichment processes. The team successfully demonstrated chemical pilot design, construction, shakedown, and operations of the plant. We produced the Phase II deliverable REYSc concentrate ((50 g of >60 wt.% purity REYSc salts on elemental basis), generated the feed for the Phase II follow-on program, identified processing challenges for future optimizations, and refined the techno-economic model. In the Phase II follow-on program, the project team: (1) developed and demonstrated processes to increase the REE amount by 3X (content basis) and convert the Phase II REE salt mixture to an oxide mixture, (2) produced/delivered >38 g of REO mixture with >85 wt.% purity (elemental basis); (3) developed processes to recover critical minerals scandium and aluminum from intermediate streams; (4) produced/delivered > 1 g of scandium salt mixture with >85 wt. % purity (elemental basis); (5) produced/delivered > 100 g of aluminum oxide type material with >70% wt. purity (elemental basis); and (6) updated the techno-economic model from the baseline Phase II program to assess CAPEX and OPEX of a commercial operation. This program has developed extensive databases on process chemistry, unit operations, plant engineering, and techno-economics that will enable further scale-up toward commercial plant design. Specific future developments will be focused on achieving dramatic savings in energy, reagent usage, and operating costs. The combined results will contribute significantly for maturing the technologies of REE recovery from coal byproducts and promote the establishment of domestic REE and CM supply chains.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

DOE OSTI2023

Development of a Technical, Economic, and Risk Assessment Tool for the Evaluation of Work Reduction Opportunities

Efficient and cost-effective operation of a nuclear power plant (NPP) is essential to ensuring long-term economical and safe operation. Multiple cost saving opportunities exist, referred to here as work reduction opportunities (WRO). These WROs reduce plant operating costs by employing various cost-effective strategies (e.g., implementation of modern technologies). Identifying and objectively screening WROs is an essential task to help reduce overall costs. However, there is no comprehensive framework for assessing WROs in the nuclear industry and evaluating their impact on plant operations. This report presents a novel framework for systematically evaluating WROs from a technical, economic, and risk perspective. As NPPs continue to add new technology and implement modernization strategies into their current processes, potential WROs are commonly identified. Although most WROs have the potential to reduce costs, not all opportunities will result in significant cost savings due to unforeseen risks, large implementation costs, or benefits that fall short of expectations. Examples of this can be the result of a technology that is not fully developed, uncertainty in the amount of cost reduction, or difficulties introducing a new process into an organization. These uncertainties can manifest several ways and can result in a WRO with limited cost savings or even a loss of investment. The framework developed emphasizes the importance of effectively screening the WROs from a holistic perspective to objectively identify inefficiencies and ensure a positive impact to the organization. This report presents the Technical, Economic, and Risk Assessment (TERA) as a key methodology for the screening and evaluation of potential WROs. The TERA framework begins with a screening phase where the process is examined through a hybrid combination of Lean Six Sigma and Integrated Operations for Nuclear (ION) guiding principles. This framework examines the current processes using the Lean Six Sigma SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, Consumers) methodology but retains the ION key elements of People, Technology, Process, and Governance as important factors to the nuclear decision-making process. By combining the principles of Lean Six Sigma and ION, the developed screening process is specific to the nuclear industry in that it systematically evaluates WROs in order to implement new technology that is comprehensively evaluated. The TERA begins by mapping current processes as they relate to WROs and examining the inefficiencies. Furthermore, the created process map can be used to identify and evaluate potential solutions. Using key performance indicators (KPIs), the TERA evaluates each area—technology, economics, and risk—for uncertainties and to perform cost-benefit analysis. The results of the TERA are important KPIs that allow for an evaluation of different processes and technology implementations. This assessment enables decision-makers to compare various WROs based on metrics and then make informed decisions for which opportunity to implement first. This research includes not only the creation of the TERA framework, but also the evaluation of its performance. A case study for screening potential WROs at Southern Nuclear Company is presented that utilizes the TERA methodology. Through the use of TERA, various WROs were screened, and the solutions evaluated for cost-benefit expectations. The report concludes by summarizing the overall effort and implications for utility modernization. The performance of the screening and TERA are discussed as well as the impact on the nuclear industry. The TERA process enables utilities to evaluate and inform investment decisions for WROs and mitigate any potential risks. Through this research, we provide utilities with a valuable framework to optimize operations, reduce costs, and drive continuous process improvement.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

DOE OSTI2023

Techno-Economic Case Study: Fermentation Cost Impacts from Selected Critical Material Attributes

This report summarizes analysis conducted to support a case study under the Feedstock-Conversion Interface Consortium (FCIC) focused on techno-economic analysis (TEA) modeling to quantify the economic implications of biomass hydrolysate substrate variability on fermentation performance and resultant biorefinery fuel yields. It is known that fermentation inhibitors or byproducts, as may either come from constituents in the biomass feedstock or imparted through biorefinery processing operations, can detrimentally impact fermentation rates and yields. However, it is often difficult to isolate fermentation impacts to individual components given the complex nature of biomass varying simultaneously in multiple attributes from one lot to another. For this study, we worked with FCIC researchers to obtain data on key fermentation performance metrics, namely productivity rates and conversion yields, across a number of material attribute species previously selected by the researchers as "critical" attributes which may be found in hydrolysate used as microbial carbon sources during fermentation. These data were run through TEA models to estimate resultant impacts on biorefinery economics, reported as minimum fuel selling price (MFSP). Overall, the trends in MFSP closely followed fuel yields, in turn tied to fermentation process yields and selectivity, with minimal economic impact from variations in fermentation productivity.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

DOE OSTI2023

Techno-Economic Analysis of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell-Gas Turbine Hybrid Systems for Stationary Power Applications Using Renewable Hydrogen

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC)–gas turbine (GT) hybrid systems can produce power at high electrical efficiencies while emitting virtually zero criteria pollutants (e.g., ozone, carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, and particulate matters). This study presents new insights into renewable hydrogen (RH 2 )-powered SOFC–GT hybrid systems with respect to their system configuration and techno-economic analysis motivated by the need for clean on-demand power. First, three system configurations are thermodynamically assessed: (I) a reference case with no SOFC off-gas recirculation, (II) a case with cathode off-gas recirculation, and (III) a case with anode off-gas recirculation. While these configurations have been studied in isolation, here we provide a detailed performance comparison. Moreover, a techno-economic analysis is conducted to study the economic competitiveness of RH 2 -fueled hybrid systems and the economies of scale by offering a comparison to natural gas (NG)-fueled systems. Results show that the case with anode off-gas recirculation, with 68.50%-lower heating value (LHV) at a 10 MW scale, has the highest efficiency among the studied scenarios. When moving from 10 MW to 50 MW, the efficiency increases to 70.22%-LHV. These high efficiency values make SOFC–GT hybrid systems highly attractive in the context of a circular economy as they outcompete most other power generation technologies. The cost-of-electricity (COE) is reduced by about 10% when moving from 10 MW to 50 MW, from USD 1976/kW to USD 1668/kW, respectively. Renewable H 2 is expected to be economically competitive with NG by 2030, when the U.S. Department of Energy’s target of USD 1/kg RH 2 is reached.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

DOE OSTI2025

Agriculture’s Potential Regional Economic Contributions to the United States Economy When Supplying Feedstock to the Bio-Economy

The economic impact of obtaining biomass could become significant to U.S. rural economies via the establishment of a bioeconomy. In 2023, the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory provided a road map to obtain over a billion tons of biomass for conversion to bioenergy and other products. Using information from this roadmap, this study estimates the potential positive and negative economic impacts that occur because of land use change, along with increased technological advances. This is achieved by using the input–output model, IMPLAN, and impacting 179 Bureau of Economic Analysis regions in the conterminous United States. Biomass included in the analysis comprises dedicated energy crops, crop residues, and forest residues. The analysis found that managing pastures more intensively could result in releasing land to produce dedicated energy crops on 30.8 million hectares, resulting in the production of 361 million metric tons of biomass. This, coupled with crop residues from barley, corn, oats, sorghum, and wheat (162 million metric tons), plus forest residues (41 million metric tons), provide 564 million dry metric tons of biomass. Assuming the price for biomass in 2023 dollars was USD 77 per dry metric-ton, this additional production results in an economic benefit for the nation of USD 619 billion, an increase from the Business As Is scenario (Baseline) of almost USD 100 billion per year, assuming a mature biomass industry. An additional 700,000 jobs are required to grow, harvest/collect, and transport the biomass material from the land.

ForSEAM↗

DOE OSTI2021

A Fundamental Economic Assessment of Recovering Rare Earth Elements and Critical Minerals from Acid Mine Drainage Using a Network Sourcing Strategy

In recent years, acid mine drainage (AMD) has emerged as a promising unconventional source of rare earth elements (REEs) and other critical minerals (CMs) such as cobalt and manganese. In this regard, AMD provides a natural heap leaching effect that extracts and concentrates REE/CM from the host strata creating a partially enriched feedstock suitable for downstream extraction, separation, and recovery. While several prior studies have described processes and approaches for the valorization of AMD, very few have described the supply chain and infrastructure requirements as well as the associated economic assessment. To that end, this paper provides a fundamental economic assessment of REE/CM recovery from AMD using a network sourcing strategy in addition to a robust, flexible feedstock separations and refining facility. The methodology of this paper follows that of a typical techno-economic analysis with capital and operating costs estimated using AACE Class IV (FEL-2) guidelines. To demonstrate the range of possible outcomes, four pricing scenarios were modeled including contemporary prices (September, 2021) as well as the minimum and maximum prices over the last decade. In addition, five production scenarios were considered reflecting variations in the product suite, ranging from full elemental separation to magnet REE and CM production only (i.e., Pr, Nd, Tb, Dy, Y, Sc, Co, and Mn). The results of this analysis show that, with the exception of the minimum price scenario, all operational configurations have positive economic indicators with rates of return varying from 25% to 32% for the contemporary price scenario. The optimal configuration was determined to be production of Co, Mn, and all REEs except for mischmetal, which is not recovered. Sensitivity analysis and Monte Carlo simulation show that capital cost and HCl consumption are the two major factors influencing rate of return, thus indicating opportunities for future technology development and cost optimization. Implications of the study and a cooperative profit-sharing model for sourcing are also described.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2020

Optimal Operation for Resilient and Economic Modes in an Islanded Alaskan Grid: Preprint

Power System is a complex system, with an objective to provide power to the customers. The objective is driven by a complex consideration of the secure, economic and resilient operation of the system. With the growing occurrence of extreme events emphasis has been shifted towards making the grid more resilient. However, an economic operation is still a priority for the utilities as well as its customers. Many utilities especially small isolated micro-grids do not emphasize much on an economic and resilient operation, but more on reliability. In this research we focus on striking a balance between economic and resilientoperation, ensuring reliability.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2023

Comparative Techno-Economic Analysis of Available Feedstocks for High-Temperature Conversion: Whole Tree Thinnings and Mature Pine Residues

The techno-economic and life cycle implications of utilizing low-cost feedstocks in a high temperature conversion process are of great interest. Here, we investigate the conversion cost impacts of two underutilized feedstocks from the commercial pine industry: 13-year-old whole trees, representing trees removed for the purpose of precommercial thinning, and 23-year-old pine residues, representing a waste stream produced from the deconstruction of mature trees for other purposes. Experimental fast pyrolysis (FP) yields for each feedstock were adjusted to a catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) basis and used to estimate process economics by employing published correlations based on rigorous techno-economic modeling. These correlations were used in tandem with results from supply and preprocessing analyses to evaluate the field-to-fuel economics of each feedstock. A small difference in minimum fuel selling price (MFSP) was found between the conversion costs for the two feedstocks, with 23-year-old residues demonstrating a net benefit of $0.27 per gasoline gallon equivalent (GGE) compared to the 13- year-old whole tree thinnings, driven primarily by feedstock supply costs. This suggests that both whole tree thinnings and pine residues may be viable feedstock options for CFP conversion. Life cycle inventories (LCIs) were also generated for each case, enabling a field-to-fuel quantification of the cost and carbon cycle associated with each feedstock.

catalytic fast pyrolysis↗

DOE OSTI2023

Jobs and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) Models

The Jobs and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) models (https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/jedi/) are publicly available, user-friendly tools designed to estimate the economic impacts of both construction and operation of power generation and biofuel plants at a local (usually state) level. Based on project-specific and default inputs (from techno-economic analysis data and NREL's expertise), these models estimate the number of jobs and economic benefits to a region that could reasonably be supported by a particular project. Underlying these calculations is an input-output framework that models the local economy as a network of sectors buying and selling to one-another, creating a multiplier effect. Over the last decade, JEDI has been widely used by both the academic and private sectors, serving as the foundations for multiple peer-reviewed publications and impact analysis reports.

economic impact analysis↗

DOE OSTI2020

Does the leaf economic spectrum hold within plant functional types? A Bayesian multivariate trait meta-analysis

The leaf economic spectrum is a widely-studied axis of plant trait variability that defines a trade-off between leaf longevity and productivity. While this has been investigated at the global scale, where it is robust, and at local scales, where deviations from it are common, it has received less attention at the intermediate scale of PFTs. We investigated whether global leaf economic relationships are also present within the scale of plant functional types (PFTs) commonly used by Earth System models, and the extent to which this global-PFT hierarchy can be used to constrain trait estimates. We developed a hierarchical multivariate Bayesian model that assumes separate means and covariance structures within and across PFTs and fit this model to seven leaf traits from the TRY database related to leaf longevity, morphology, biochemistry, and photosynthetic metabolism. Although patterns of trait covariation were generally consistent with the leaf economic spectrum, we found three approximate tiers to this consistency. Relationships among morphological and biochemical traits (SLA, N, P) were the most robust within and across PFTs, suggesting that covariation in these traits is driven by universal leaf construction trade-offs and stoichiometry. Relationships among metabolic traits (R_d, V_{c,max}, J_max) were slightly less consistent, reflecting in part their much sparser sampling (especially for high-latitude PFTs), but also pointing to more flexible plasticity in plant metabolistm. Finally, relationships involving leaf lifespan were the least consistent, indicating that leaf economic relationships related to leaf lifespan are dominated by across-PFT differences and that within-PFT variation in leaf lifespan is more complex and idiosyncratic. Across all traits, these covariance were an important source of information, as evidenced by the improved imputation accuracy and reduced predictive uncertainty in multivariate models compared to univariate models. Ultimately, our study reaffirms the value of studying not just individual traits but the multivariate trait space and the utility of hierarchical modeling for studying the scale dependence of trait relationships.

biodiversity, ecological modeling, ecology, leaf b↗