Planning of agro-energy districts for optimum farm income and biomass energy from crops residues

The objectives of the European Union 2014–2020 programming period include increase of energy production from renewable sources through the creation of agro‐energy districts. The utilization of residues of annual and perennial crops in agro‐energy districts as a combustion product of the exploitation of biomass industry to produce heat and electricity, create a new sustainable environment. This paper focuses on optimizing the agricultural income and the biomass energy potential from crop residues in agricultural districts and especially in a case study in municipality of Almopia in Northern Greece. For this purpose, the optimal plan of agricultural production of the case study area arising from the development of a multi‐criteria mathematical programming model that combines more than one conflicting criteria to a utility function that interprets the behavior of farmers and better approaches the rational decision making. The objective of the proposed model is to combine two criteria, namely the maximization of the total gross margin of the case study area and the maximization of electric or thermal power from biomass of crop residues, based on a set of constraints for land, labor, capital, Common Agricultural Policy rules, etc. The optimal production plan of the case study area achieves higher gross margin (3.6 %) and higher level of bioenergy (7.7 %) than the existent production plan. The optimal plan also presents better results than those achieved by the linear programming model when the only goal is to maximize either the gross margin or the production of bioenergy.