Give competitors a helping hand or throw a spanner in the works? A case study for the development of a corn stover market in Flanders

Corn stover is gaining attention as a valuable biomass resource for the bio-economy. However, today, the corn stover is hardly harvested and a market is yet to be developed. As a result, potential investors in processing plants face a large feedstock risk as they are not sure sufficient corn stover will be available for their activities, nor what the corn stover price might be. With the help of an agent-based model, we investigated whether the feedstock risk of a large-scale centralized bio-ethanol plant (BEP), could be reduced by first promoting the valorisation of corn stover in small-scale decentralized biogas plants. This paper details the results of a scenario analysis, simulating three different scenarios. The results show that corn stover prices increase when the BEP needs to compete with the biogas plants. On the other hand, the feedstock risk is largely reduced. With our model we were able to gain some first insights into a possible corn stover market development under the promotion of two different valorisation trajectories and when these two trajectories compete with each other. Our model is a first crucial step in understanding how a corn stover market in Flanders could develop under different circumstances in order to address the uncertainties of potential investors.