Following the survey conducted, in order to assess quantitative and distribution of biomass residues, an economic potential of their exploitation was calculated. The main goal was to asses the price of biomass. The cost of biomass has resulted by the sum of harvesting operations, gathering, pellets production and the most influent was result the transportations cost. These last costs were calculated from centres that should been made in proximity of the ones planned from the Regional Waste Master Plan for the gathering of the dry substances present in waste. By mean of the slope map, the street network map and the climatic type is possible to calculate the areas easily accessible and with a good technical potential. Distances, that are very significant for the cost’s calculation were
calculated from the collection centres. The next step was to evidence how and with which cost the biomass might be transported to collection centres.

By the knowing the distances and a cost of transportation for km, has been possible to create the economical supply curves for each type of biomass. The curves were built considering that as the price rise it becomes possible to gather more biomass due to the possibility to gather the biomass at increasing distances. In the following figure is shown the regional supply curves for agricultural biomass, for SRF and for the forestry biomass of Parco dei Nebrodi. The supply curves were done for every type of biomass and for the nine provinces of the Region.

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Figure 3. Supply curves