La valutazione dei costi di trasporto delle biomasse agroforestali: funzioni e mappatura dei costi su base geografica

Organising a biomass-energy chain is quite complex since it implicates the interests and expectations of the many subjects involved. Today, one of the main technical bonds strongly restricting the spreading of such an activity is represented by costs (for production, collection, transportation, etc.) which are essential components able to affect the investment choices significantly. The main component of the passive item of biomass cost is identified in transportation expenses, determined geographically under the availability of unitary biomass by concentration and the distance between the production and processing sites. The present study aims at implementing a transportation cost mapping, drawn thanks to the spatial analyses included in the Geographical Information System (GIS). The themes involved in the creation of the cost function can be identified in the use of soil (average biomass availability per year/hectare), information concerning the punctual biomass availability, road system and morphology, and exact localisation of plants for processing wooden material, etc. The idea stands in the will to search for and afterwards apply a function able to match cost and distance by keeping in mind several parameters. Stepping back, the realisation of the transport cost function is useful in case we have not definitely placed the biomass processing plants in the whole area as it is in the region of Basilicata, the area analysed in the present proposal. The proposed analysis would be useful to identify the economically valid collection basins and the best positions where a new plant can be installed, and also the size itself of the biomass processing plant on the basis of the actual production conditions of the area.