Biomuovien päästöjen marginaalivähennyskustannusten evaluointi integroidulla arviontimallilla

This thesis studies the climate change mitigation potential of replacing conventional plastics production with bio-based plastics. The approach covers primarily the economic potential with varied climate policies. To achieve this system-level conception, an integrated assessment tool (IAM) called SuCCESs developed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) is used. Such system-level modelling allows to consider the dynamics of decisions and changes in the system or in the climate policy. The results show that bioplastics are not economically beneficial alone, but with climate policies following the Paris Agreement, bioplastics become both an economically attractive and viable method of climate change mitigation. Bio-based production processes also enhance the flexibility of commodity production, which slightly decreases the system costs even without considering the environmental impact. However, the choice of bio-feedstocks is substantial in determining the climate and sustainability impact since the production of some bio-feedstocks can result in major negative outcomes, such as deforestation and increased world hunger. The limitations of the study include assumptions and approximations required to model bioplastics production. Although a simple sensitivity analysis suggests that the result is relatively insensitive to variability in techno-economic parameters, the role of uncertainty in future development and competing technologies remains a question for future studies. However, the results provide an example scenario showing how bioplastics could be utilized in the future.