Your choices:
1 Fuel: liquid; 2 Process heat; 3 Biomass (fermentable sludge)
| What is your resource? | What do you want to deliver? | What is the service the customer wants? |
| Biomass (digestible sludge) | District cooling | Comfortable indoor climate |
| 3 Biomass (fermentable sludge) | District heating | Electricity |
| Biomass (solid) | Electricity | Process cooling (< 0 °C) |
| Geothermal | Fuel: Gaseous | 2 Process heat/steam (50 - 150 °C) |
| Sunshine | 1 Fuel: Liquid | 2 Process heat (150 - 1000 °C) |
| Water | Fuel: Solid | 2 Process heat (> 1000 °C) |
| Wind | Local cooling (ind. house) | Transport |
| Residual oils/fats etc | Local heating (ind. house) |
Unless taxation and other economic incitements radically change, there will be one major reason for a process industry to switch from fossil fuel to liquid biofuel, and that is to strengthen the companies' green profile.
As pointed out in other places in this material, todays' production of ethanol is to a significant extent based on dedicated energy crops. Prior to changing from fossil fuel to ethanol in large scale industrial applications, one will therefore have to consider the ethical aspects.