Optimizing biomass and electricity allocation through comparative advantage: extending the merit-order logic from cost to efficiency

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a quantitative framework for comparing allocation efficiency across sectors, which can be applied to other renewable resources and end uses.

🏢実務担当者:Offers a strategic perspective for energy planners and utilities on how to prioritize biomass vs. electricity for heating and mobility investments.

🏛政策担当者:Argues against technology-neutral policies and suggests coordinated merit-order governance to avoid inefficient resource allocation in the energy transition.

The energy transition would require not only deploying renewable technologies at scale but strategically allocating limited renewable resources across competing end uses. This study develops a holistic allocation framework based on comparative advantage principles to optimize lignocellulosic biomass and low-carbon electricity distribution between heating and mobility applications. Through comprehensive well-to-wheel efficiency analysis, we quantify performance differentials: electricity via heat pumps would achieve roughly 3.6 times the efficiency of biomass combustion for heating, while for aviation mobility, electricity-based e-fuels would reach only a marginally higher efficiency than biofuels (about 1.1 times). The critical insight emerges from comparing these ratios: electricity's comparative advantage would be more than three times greater for heating than for aviation, revealing that optimal allocation should direct electricity toward heating, where its relative advantage is greatest, and reserve scarce biomass for hard-to-electrify sectors like aviation. Quantitative scenarios demonstrate that strategic allocation based on comparative advantages rather than absolute efficiencies could yield additional useful energy from equivalent primary resources. This framework challenges technology-neutral policy approaches, demonstrating they could produce inefficient outcomes when resources are heterogeneous and scarce. We propose merit order-based allocation governance that would coordinate policies across traditionally siloed sectors, maximizing useful energy delivery while advancing energy justice by expanding resources available for fair distribution. The analysis establishes that allocation efficiency would represent not merely technocratic optimization but an ethical imperative: inefficient allocation shrinks the societal energy pie, disproportionately harming vulnerable populations. Strategic resource allocation guided by comparative advantage analysis could offer essential orientation for accelerating transitions toward sustainable, equitable, low-carbon energy systems.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115477first seen 2026-07-26 05:01:19