(226e) Moving Past Resilience in Progressive Supply Chains from the Perspective of Large-Scale Shipping of Future Energy Carriers

With the projected shift towards more sustainable forms of energy accompanied by an increase in overall global energy consumption, energy supply chains will need to become progressive. To this end, there is a need to ensure that they will not only be able to accommodate the future energy mix and its associated carriers but also any disruptions that may occur during and after the transition such as climatic or geopolitical upheavals. The transport of these carriers is an intermediate and crucial step of the energy supply chain that relies on various modes of transportation depending on the quantity of energy transported and the distance it must traverse from production to distribution. Recently, more focus has been cast on expanding the possibilities of obtaining energy from more localized sources that employ ground transportation such as pipelines and trucks, to more extensive supply chains that span across borders and require marine transportation. However, a significant transformation is expected in present-day shipping fleets to become sustainable in their operations [1] and further accommodate these more renewable carriers that are primarily comprised of chemicals that can easily store energy. Moreover, these chemicals have established operational flexibility in terms of the quantity and location of their production and distribution that make them ideal candidates to transport energy across large distances. In this work, an analysis on moving towards guaranteed resilience is explored through the incorporation of risk mitigation strategies to supply chain optimization for the large-scale shipping of future energy carriers [2]. Through this integrated approach, the optimal production and distribution locations can be determined along with the suitable energy mix that meets specified economic and environmental constraints while being resilient to disruptions. The analysis provides decision-makers with a preliminary understanding of the tradeoffs between costs, operability, and resilience in the design of future supply chains. The application of this approach is illustrated through an example where energy trades that are set to achieve guaranteed resilience are optimized for varying economic and environmental targets.

1. IMO, 2013. Concept of a Sustainable Maritime Transportation System.
2. Chrisandina, N.J., Vedant, S., Iakovou, E., Pistikopoulos, E.N., El-Halwagi, M.M., 2022. Multi-scale integration for enhanced resilience of sustainable energy supply chains: Perspectives and challenges. Computers & Chemical Engineering. 164, 107891.