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The reliable operation of the primary distribution of refined products supply chains is crucial in guaranteeing the demand for retail markets. The uncertainties such as demand, production, and inventory will affect the supply chain operation. However, there lacks literature that studies the reliability of demand‐side management of refined products supply chains. This reliability assessment can help define the weak points and boost the performance of the supply chain. And it can help decision‐makers to improve the satisfaction of retail markets. In this paper, a systematic method for comprehensively assessing the reliability of refined products supply chains is proposed. At first, a mathematical programming model is developed to get the distribution plan of refined products. Then, several scenarios such as increasing demand, decreasing production, refineries disruption, and pipeline interruption relevant to the real situations of refined products supply chains are defined. Besides, indices including satisfaction rate, number of dissatisfied retail markets, refined products shortage, shortage of a single retail market, and average shortage duration are proposed to evaluate the reliability of the demand‐side management in primary distribution processes. At last, the Monte Carlo simulation is adopted for a comprehensive analysis combining all the scenarios. This analysis shows a clear picture of the influence of uncertainties. This method is applied to assess the reliability of demand‐side management of a real refined products supply chain. After analyzing different scenarios, the average probability of dissatisfaction under the reference scenario came as 1.93 × 10−4/day that means one day in around 14.2 years could have refined products shortage. This method can also help decision‐makers to assess other primary distribution of refined products supply chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, state-owned monopoly on multiproduct pipeline network leads to low energy efficiency, expensive logistics costs and high greenhouse gas emissions in the downstream oil supply chain. In response to increasing pressures applied by the conflict between supply and demand and the need for emission mitigation, the government has promoted pipeline network reform for years. However, the selection of an appropriate reform scheme is controversial, and no researcher has conducted quantitative analysis on this issue. This paper quantifies the impacts of pipeline network reform on the downstream oil supply chain of China so as to provide policy implications. An integrated evaluation framework is established by coupling a mathematical programming technique with the energy-economy-environment (3E) assessment method. Five future scenarios are designed including the baseline (BAU) and four types of reform policies: third-party access (TPA), pipeline network integration (PNI), business cooperation (BC) and third-party access combined with business cooperation (TPA-BC). The results indicate that (i) all reform schemes have significant benefits for aspects of 3E; (ii) the scenarios can be ranked by 3E performance as follows: TPA-BC > BC > PNI > TPA > BAU; and (iii) only when the pipeline networks need to reserve a high capacity margin can the advantages of PNI compared to TPA be revealed; otherwise, the gap between them is small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing global energy demand and worsening ecological environment, coal-abundant countries are actively developing the technologies which could convert coal to liquid fuels, so called coal-to-liquids (CTL), to adjust and optimize energy structure, guarantee energy security, and reduce environmental pollution. For the optimal planning of a CTL supply chain, a two-stage stochastic programming model is established to maximize the profit of the CTL supply chain under the products demand uncertainty. Various technical and operational constraints involving the infrastructure construction, CTL plants production, products and coal transport as well as the influence of products oversupply, are considered in the model. Based on the sample average approximation method, a number of finite scenarios for the uncertain parameters are generated, the established stochastic model is converted into an equivalent deterministic model and then solved. Finally, the model was successfully applied to a real-world CTL supply chain in Sinkiang, China. The applicability of the proposed model was testified. Also, comparative studies were carried out to illustrate the influence of the uncertainty on the CTL supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature gas plays a fundamental role in promoting cleaner production worldwide. Given this, evaluation of the natural gas supply chain from the perspective of both economic and environmental-friendly should be considered simultaneously while proposing a comprehensive estimation model remain a challenge in the performance improving study. What's more, the inherent uncertainty and strong variation associated with natural gas demand attach difficulty in precise analysis and make an impact on the stable gas supply. This paper proposes an integrated mathematical model to estimate the economic and environmental (2-E) performance, where multiple natural gas products and transportation modes are considered in economic section, and the major carbon emission from upstream production to downstream users are given in the environmental part. An index is formulated to indicate the supply risk caused by the uncertain gas demand. Considering the risk attitude of supply chain designers may have a significant impact on the final 2-E performance, three scenarios namely Risk Neutral Scenario, Risk Aversion Scenario, and Risk-taking Scenario are applied to quantify the impact. The case study result demonstrates that 1) In comparison to the neutral scenario model which is commonly used in the literature, the annual economic profits and total carbon dioxide emission in this paper have a 6.78 million CNY and 2.06 kiloton variation, respectively. 2) The pipeline layout and location of functional stations are coincident within three scenarios, while the detailed transportation scheme in the operation period changed a lot. 3) The reliability varies from 99.88% to 89.37% within three scenarios, and the supply chain designers can make a tradeoff between the 2-E performance and supply risk according to the proposed relationship between theme. • The integrated economic evaluation of the natural gas supply chain is proposed. • The environmental performance based on the economic supply scheme is analyzed. • The relationship between economic and environmental performance and supply risk is considered. • The feasibility and effectiveness of the model are verified by a real supply chain in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing demand of refined products and growing concern about carbon emissions, the planned multi-product pipelines, serving as the primary way of refined products transportation, should be designed reasonably, economically, and low carbon-oriented so that the sustainable and environmentally friendly production and the rational construction of downstream oil supply chain can be achieved. Aiming at this issue, a multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed to minimize the total economic costs and CO 2 emission simultaneously. Various actual process and technical constraints including pipeline construction, pump stations layout, pipeline hydraulic and pumps configurations are considered in the model. Based on the augmented ε-constraint method, the conflicting objectives are dealt with and the Pareto front can be get. Finally, based on a predicted future scenario of regional refined products demand, the proposed model was successfully applied to a real-word planned multi-product pipeline in China. Two cases are given to demonstrate the model's applicability and the influence of CO 2 emission objective on the pipeline design scheme determination. Meanwhile, the trade-off between the two objectives was analyzed in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An evaluation approach for quantifying the impact of policy on bioenergy is proposed. • Policy scenarios have been coupled into the mathematical model. • The bioenergy development potential of 31 provinces in China has been evaluated. • The impact of policy and correspondingly development direct of bioenergy have been revealed. As the most competitive energy for replacing fossil fuel, bioenergy accords with the requirement of clean supply and brings great economic and social benefits. This study develops a comprehensive framework to quantitatively evaluate the impact of policy on the bioenergy industry. The proposed framework comprises of two major parts, containing simulation models for the biomass resource allocation under different policies and the comprehensive evaluation system for bioenergy development potential under the specific policy. Five policies are considered, including encouraging biomass cogeneration (EBC), supporting biomass heating (SBH), developing technology for biofuel (DPT), establishing raw material collection system (RMC), and priority of using bio-natural gas (PUB). The results demonstrate that the order of policy impact is DPT > PUB > SBH > EBC > RMC. DPT has the largest promotion of biofuel, which is the preferred policy of the development of bioenergy. PUB can better promote the development of biomass power generation, while EBC and SBH have a greater impact on biomass heating. The impacts of policies on regional bioenergy development have been revealed and regional policy implications are given. This approach provides a tool for policymakers to quantify the impacts of policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to resource depletion and tightening carbon emissions policies, the product oil is gradually being substituted by biofuels and faced with falling demand. A large number of studies have been done on the optimization of the biofuel supply chain, but few of them have considered the existing petroleum pipelines for policy reasons. Market-based reforms in the oil and gas industry have provided the possibility of pipeline sharing, whereby pipeline owners can use the remaining delivery capacity to transport other liquid fuels that are allowed into the pipeline, such as biofuels, thereby increasing pipeline benefits and reducing biofuel logistics costs. This paper develops a logistics optimization model considering multi-product pipeline scheduling from the perspective of biofuel suppliers and proposes a pipe-rail transportation mode to assess the optimization potential of logistics costs. Finally, this paper verifies the feasibility of the proposed approach using a logistics system in a region of China as a practical case study and conducts a sensitivity analysis on whether changes in the demand for product oil and biofuels affect the choice of pipeline opening location, concluding that there is no effect within a 4-fold increase in biofuel production and a 0.78-fold decrease in product oil demand. • Propose a method to evaluate the sharing capacity of single-source pipelines. • Develop a logistics optimization model considering pipeline scheduling. • Propose a pipe-rail transportation mode. • Reduce biofuel logistics costs by 8.64% or 8.41%. • Pipeline sharing program will not be affected until biofuels increase 4 times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Develop a method to evaluate the resilience of the downstream oil supply chain. • Propose a strategy of increasing depot inventory to improve resilience. • Establish two indices to represent the resilience of the supply chain. • Conduct sensitivity analysis for the resilience of the supply chain under different scenarios. As climate change intensifies and extreme weather events occur more frequently, the uncertainties of demand, production and inventory will affect the operation and management of supply chains. In this paper, a systematic method for evaluating the resilience of the supply chain is proposed, which is applied to the demand side management of an actual downstream oil supply chain. According to the practical operation of the downstream oil supply chain, several scenarios such as disruption of refineries, shutdown of pipelines and increasing demand are defined. Then, two indices are introduced to make a quantitative resilience assessment for the studied downstream oil supply chain. The inventory strategy is also proposed and applied to different scenarios. Finally, Monte Carlo simulation is used to make a comprehensive analysis with multiple scenarios. The results show that increasing the inventory of storage depots can improve the resilience of the supply chain by 2.67% to 14.83%. According to the sensitivity analysis for the failure rate and repair rate of each link, it is indicated that the resilience can be improved by 5.95% when the repair rate is doubled and be reduced to 16.04% when the repair rate is reduced by half. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, more than 14 million tons of edible oils are consumed each year, which could result in a staggering amount of waste cooking oil that needs to be discharged. Converting the waste cooking oil to biodiesel can reduce environmental emissions and achieve economic value. As the recycling supply chain is not matured, the Chinese government is trialing various policies to improve the management of waste cooking oil. However, evidence shows that current policies have shortcomings, which reduce the efficiency and sustainability of the supply chain, recycling and biorefineries capacities. It is not trivial to quantify the impacts of policies and only limited amount of research has reported the supply and value chain of waste cooking oil to be used as biodiesel. To bridge this gap, this paper proposes an optimization-based model to quantify the likely impacts from policy interventions, i.e. integrating and opening the third party take-back supply chains, motivation policies, subsidy policies and demand adjustments due to policy changes. A case study, which includes 63 stakeholders in Shandong Province, China, is selected to demonstrate the impacts such changes can have. The new research method and computational results of the economic and environmental assessments show that the integration of stakeholders and markets increase efficiency and sustainability. Whilst the opening markets option does make fairer profit allocations across the stakeholders, but does not increase efficencies to the same level. In addition, and to the best of authors' knowledge for the first time, it is shown that unfair profit allocations will decrease the amount of recycled materials. This research has wider applications to policy developments and governmental interventions that aim to promote cleaner production of goods and services. For example, the optimization model can be applied to other circumstances such as electricity supplies, raw material extraction or the recycling of other materials like construction and demolition wastes or plastics. Image 1 • A policy evaluation approach is proposed for the WCO-to-biodiesel supply chain. • Cooperative game theory is considered in the optimization model. • Integrating and opening markets and management modes are compared. • Four different policy interventions are evaluated. • A real case in Shandong province is studied to validate the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]