Förutsättningar för ökad biodrivmedelsproduktion i östra Mellansverige

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this master thesis was to investigate the conditions for an increased production of rape methyl ester (RME), ethanol and biogas in co-production with the industry with the aim of increasing the regional growth in the county of Uppsala, Södermanland and Västmanland. 900 000 inhabitants live in these counties. An optimization based on linear programming was used to determine the design of the fuel production with respect to different parameters: amount of fuel, energy efficiency, cost-effectiveness and regional growth. The optimization was divided into two models where the first model excluded co-production and the second model included coproduction. The model calculated optimal allocations of agricultural land for growth of rape seed, wheat and grass for production of RME, ethanol and biogas under various conditions. The result showed that biogas is the best fuel in all optimizations except in the optimization of profit. Ethanol is produced when the profit of the production is optimized. RME is not produced in any of the five optimizations. In contrast to ethanol and RME, biogas can be produced from different waste products which don’t require agricultural land. The addition of hydrogen to the biogas process is the synergy which affects the fuel production the most. Hydrogen can be produced through electrolysis with electricity from a combined heat and power plant and this synergy increases the biogas produced from 2,4 TWh in the first model to 2,9 TWh in the second model. Furthermore, the production of biogas contributes to an increase of the gross regional product with 3,5 billion Swedish kronor and 2 300 job opportunities. Also, because of decreased emissions when replacing fossil fuels with biofuels, the national economic cost decreases 0,7 billion Swedish kronor. It is concluded that a public actor will always benefit from producing biofuels instead of buying fossil fuels. To receive the positive impacts of biogas production such as efficient use of energy, increased gross regional product and decreased national economic costs, new and/or changed economic means are required for biogas to be the best fuel when it comes to profit of the production plant.