White Papers Supply Chain Challenges: BIOMASS | Page 5

BIOMASS
‘green’ - impacts profitability and reputation. Ensuring
green certificates are issued so that eligible subsidies
can be paid is critical to cash flow and financial
performance; and ensuring large scale stocks of
wood pellets are available to keep the generation
facility operational are all new aspects and challenges
to managing fuel supply chains effectively.
Indeed, the supply chain security of electric power
generation that uses biomass and liquid hydrocarbons
for its fuel needs represents major operational risk.
A ComTechAdvisory Whitepaper
More complex supply chains increase planning,
logistics, and data management needs. Monitoring,
calculation, and reporting of GHG footprints and
procurement activities are essential aspects of this
issue.
Incumbent E/CTRM solutions on the market have not
sought to meet these requirements and have focused
on purely trading activities, which addresses only part
of the spectrum of risk faced by power generators
and their suppliers. At the same time, the number of
companies involved in these activities is increasing.
Major power plant operators are in some cases
not just consuming biomass but also trading in the
biomass market too. Specialist biomass supply and
logistics firms as well as brokers are trading biomass
supplies from multiple international locations.
A BIOMASS SPECIFIC E/CTRM SOLUTION
This absence of functionality was seen as an
opportunity by Generation 10 when they looked
at the market and so they subsequently invested
in configuring their platform, G10 Commodity
Manager to fill the gap. The solution provides many
of the requirements for traceability and supply chain
optimization, specifically as it relates to biomass and
other fuels. It provides all of the tools necessary to
collate information, measure performance, and refine
business processes. It can be used to track biomass
from forest to generation through the entire supply
chain, any certificates generated or traded in the
process as well as the GHG footprint. This allows
the generator to prove the power it generates meets
the environmental and regulatory standards, and
conforms to subsidy requirements. It can help manage
sourcing, procurement, inventory forecasting, along
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