Impact on the optimal design of bioethanol supply chains by a new European Commission proposal

The European Commission recently proposed to review the existing 2009/28/EC Directive on biofuels, in order toincrease their environmental sustainability and to decrease the recourse to alimentary biomasses. The paper eval-uates the impact of this proposal on the emerging bioethanol production system in northern Italy and compares itwith the current European Directive by analyzing the results of the supply chain economic optimization based on amixed integer linear programming model. The impact of the proposed policy is also assessed in terms of greenhousegas emissions and fuel security. Eventually, the effects on fuel consumers and taxpayers are taken into account.