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The paper attempts to analyse the environmental and economic impacts of the Multi-fuel Solar Hybrid Power Plant concept called SolComBio. An environmental and economic assessment is performed to investigate whether the concept could be suitable for energy source in remote areas compared with the conventional local energy supply systems. The technological concept relies on the combination of a solar thermal receiver and a multi-fuel pulverized biomass burner system to overcome the impediments of local or regional power supply under environmental friendly and economic sound conditions. Through the hybridisation with multi-fuel pulverized burner system, SolComBio concept overcomes the drawbacks of solar systems and offers flexibility of operation time and also possibility of fuel changes, which makes it suitable for areas with seasonal biomass production. Two cases of constructing and operating the plant in a Brazilian and Indonesian remote region are addressed. According to the calculations, SolComBio seems to be promising from the environmental side; nonetheless, depending on the conditions at the local land and feedstock markets the SolComBio concept could be competitive or not. This study offers a reflection how a technological concept can arouse interest of remote regions from the perspective of systems analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The red ceramic industry in Brazil, consisting of over 7000 companies, requires large amounts of thermal energy, currently being met mainly by native fuelwood, which causes serious deforestation and soil erosion problems. The use of firewood does not allow achieving good energy performance in industrial ceramic kilns, causing high energy losses, low productivity and low quality products (bricks and roof tiles). Thus, to implement higher added value products, besides mitigate environmental problems caused by deforestation, the use of natural gas by the sector seems to be a promising alternative. Brazil’s natural gas market has grown at a fast pace in recent years. Its share in the country’s primary energy consumption increased from 3.7% to 9.3% between 1998 and 2007, compared to almost 21% in the world. The development of the Brazilian natural gas industry was grounded on stepping up supplies through integration with Bolivia from where natural gas is imported, together with fiscal incentives for promoting the demand. This paper estimates that the natural gas market that could be developed in the Brazilian red ceramic industry corresponds to less than 5% of the total industrial natural gas consumption, meaning that a major technological transformation of the country’s red ceramic industry will not severely affect the natural gas market equilibrium, contributing to reduce the country’s high rates of deforestation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]