Integrated Biomass Supply Chain in Malaysia: A Sustainable Strategy

Abstract

As the social awareness has gradually increased, energy security has become an increasingly important consideration. Malaysia, a country that is blessed with extensive natural resources, has also recognised the need of exploring a reliable and sustainable energy source. However, due to several underlying bottlenecks, such as the traditional involvement of small medium enterprises (SMEs) in low-value utilisation of biomass, the development of the biomass industry in Malaysia is hampered. A novel mathematical model is developed to remove this inveterate barrier. In the model, vehicle capacity constraints are considered alongside with several environmental indicators, i.e., global warming potential (GWP), ozone depletion potential (ODP), acidification potential (AP), photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), nutrification potential (NP), aquatic toxicity potential (ATP), terrestrial toxicity potential (TTP), abiotic depletion potential (ADP), water footprint (WF) and land footprint (LF) to evaluate the sustainability performance of the supply chain. A case study in Johor state is opted to demonstrate the proposed model.