Correlations among Footprints within Biomass Energy Supply-Chains

In this contribution correlations among different direct footprints are studied within a multi-objective optimisation (MOO) where profit is maximised vs. footprints in the synthesis of biomass energy supply-chains. We investigate correlations among two-dimensional (2D) Pareto projections of carbon footprint (CF), energy footprint (ENF), water footprint (WF), water pollution footprint (WPF), land footprint (LF) and food-to-energy footprint (FEF). 'Dependent' footprints are i) linearly and ii) nonlinearly correlated with respect to a chosen 'independent' one (CF). The MOO is performed only for one footprint, the 'independent' one, rather than for all of them whilst the rest of the 'dependent' footprints are evaluated after the optimisation from the independent one. In this way, the number of optimisation runs in the MOO can be substantially reduced.