Biomass Cost Index: mapping biomass-to-biohydrogen feedstock costs by a new approach.

Making decisions and developing policy in the field of biofuel and bioenergy is complex because of the large number and potential arrangements of feedstocks, technologies and supply chain options. Although, the technical optimisation and sustainability of any biomass to biofuel production chain is of major importance, the overall chain cost is still considered as the key for their market deployment. A significant percentage of this cost is attributed to primary generation, transportation/handling and pretreatment of the biomass. The separation of the system into smaller semi-independent sub-systems and dealing with their interfaces, provides the pathway to map this complex landscape. The main scope of this work is to present a tool, which was developed for the comparison of diverse biomass-to-biofuel systems, in order to facilitate the cost-wise decision making on this field.