Biomass District Energy Trigeneration Systems: Emissions Reduction and Financial Impact A. Rentizelas & A. Tolis & I. Tatsiopoulos Received: 14 January 2008 / Accepted: 1 September 2008 / Published online: 2 December 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008 Abstract Biomass cogeneration is widely used for district heating applications in central and northern Europe. Biomass trigeneration on the other hand, constitutes an innovative renewable energy applica- tion. In this work, an approved United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change baseline methodology has been extended to allow the exam- ination of biomass trigeneration applications. The methodology is applied to a case study in Greece to investigate various environmental and financial aspects of this type of applications. The results suggest that trigeneration may lead to significant emissions reduction compared to using fossil fuels or even biomass cogeneration and electricity genera- tion. The emissions reduction achieved may be materialized into a considerable revenue stream for the project, if traded through a trading mechanism such as the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emis- sion Trading Scheme. A sensitivity analysis has been performed to compensate for the high volatility of the emission allowances’ value and the immaturity of the EU Trading Scheme, which prevent a reliable estimation of the related revenue. The work concludes that emission allowances trading may develop into one of the major revenue streams of biomass trigeneration projects, significantly increasing their financial yield and attractiveness. The impact on the yield is significant even for low future values of emission allowances and could become the main income revenue source of such projects, if emission allowances increase their value substantially. The application of trigeneration for district energy proves to lead to increased environmental and financial benefits compared to the cogeneration or electricity generation cases. Keywords Trigeneration . Emissions trading . Greenhouse gases . Biomass . District energy . Economic analysis 1 Introduction Scientists have been very concerned about the effects of climate change, which is mainly attributed to the increased global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Mahlman 2005; Wuebbles and Jain 2001). Signifi- cant effort has been placed on various scientific fields in order to determine ways of mitigating the climate change phenomenon. One of the major fields of interest in this framework is renewable energy generation. A recent development affecting the renewable energy sources is the Kyoto protocol. According to Water Air Soil Pollut: Focus (2009) 9:139–150 DOI 10.1007/s11267-008-9202-x A. Rentizelas (*) : A. Tolis : I. Tatsiopoulos Sector of Industrial Management and Operational Research, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Iroon Polytechniou 9, Polytechnioupoli Zografou, 15780 Athens, Greece e-mail: arent@central.ntua.gr