2.1.5.3. Social Impacts

According to [88] (p. 43), social impacts are the 'consequences of social relations (interactions) weaved in the context of an activity (production, consumption or disposal) and/or engendered by it and/or by preventive or reinforcing actions taken by stakeholders (ex. enforcing safety measures in a facility)'. A social life cycle analysis (SLCA) should consider the potential social impacts on local communities, workers, and consumers [89]. However, the literature shows that the social implications of projects related, for instance, with the use of lignocellulosic natural resources for energy [90] or wood-based products [91] are hard to estimate due to the difficulty of correlating cause–effect chains with regards to production activities and their potential social effects. Therefore, the computation of the social impacts of adopting cogeneration in a whole country is even more difficult. For this reason, in this work, the social impacts of cogeneration are focused on a preliminary estimation of such impacts on the creation of new jobs in the places where cogeneration plants could be installed. Such jobs are required, generally, for operating the cogeneration plants. Each plant will require at least five people: three for operation, one for maintenance, and one for management/supervision.

## **3. Results and Discussion**

#### *3.1. Current Electricity Demand and Fuel Consumption in the Industrial Sector of Ecuador*

The electricity demand (from de National Interconnected System—SNI) and the fuel consumption in the 555 companies are 409,199 MWh/month and 61.73 × 10<sup>6</sup> L/month (51,773 t/month) of diesel equivalent, respectively. Figure 5 shows the electricity demand and fuel consumption by each type of cluster of companies (See Table 3). It is seen that the electricity consumption (Figure 5a) is higher in the clusters of food and construction materials industries, with 19% and 17% of the total, respectively. The fuel consumption, as seen in Figure 5b, is higher, again, in the cluster of companies of construction materials and in the cluster of food industries, with 17% and 16% of the total, respectively. The large amount of companies in the food industry cluster and the presence of energy intensive industries in the construction materials cluster (e.g., cement and ceramic tiles) explain these results.

**Figure 5.** (**a**) Electricity and (**b**) fuel (diesel equivalent) consumption by industrial clusters in the list of the companies analyzed.

#### *3.2. Cogeneration Technology by Type of Industry*

Table 6 presents the technologies suggested for cogeneration schemes in each type of industry in Ecuador. The table also shows the geographic location of each cluster of industries. Internal combustion engines (diesel and gas engines) are the most prominent prime movers suggested due to their advantages, as discussed in Section 2.1.3. In addition, these engines offer the possibility of working with biodiesel and biogas, in substitution of diesel and NG, respectively, which is of interest in Ecuador. Currently the country produces only ~30 <sup>t</sup>/year of biodiesel from *Jatropha curcas* to operate diesel engines in thermal power plants the Galapagos Islands [92]. The program to produce biodiesel from this plant is in its infancy, but it is expected that the biodiesel production capacity will increase in coming years. The use of gas engines deserves further study since it is expected that the agroindustrial sector in Ecuador will start producing biogas using their residues via anaerobic digestion. However, this topic is out of the scope of this paper.

## *3.3. Potential of Cogeneration*/*Trigeneration*

The estimated potential of cogeneration in Ecuador is 598 MWel, which, as mentioned in Section 2.1, consists of the potential of cogeneration of industries with expected installed cogeneration capacity above 0.5 MWel. The value excludes the existing cogeneration capacity shown in Table 1. This potential is ~7% of the current electricity generation installed capacity in Ecuador and could produce up to 17% of the total electricity consumed in 2017 in the country. This last value is, interestingly, in the range of percentages of the cogeneration share (respect to the total electricity produced) in countries such as Germany (17%), Brazil (18%), Spain (12%), or the United States (12%) [58,93–95]. Even though in the case of Ecuador this amount refers to potential cogeneration (i.e., not installed cogeneration capacity), such value is important because of the possibility of using cogeneration during the driest season of the year, when hydropower generation is negatively affected by weather conditions (See Section 1). For this reason, cogeneration has been seen in the country as an important strategy for electricity production in the near future, and new laws and regulations are under study to promote cogeneration/trigeneration.

Figure 6 summarizes the potential of cogeneration in Ecuador by type of prime mover selected. Diesel engines are the predominant prime movers suggested for cogeneration (Section 3.2). These engines can run with biodiesel (mixed with diesel) when available. Figure 7 presents the potential of cogeneration by cluster, showing that the textile, food, and agroindustry industries are the clusters with higher potential. Moreover, the potential of trigeneration in the country is 212 MWel. Approximately 17% of the 555 companies identified in Section 2.1 could adopt trigeneration, especially in the food and beverages industries, as well as in hotels and hospitals (Figure 8).

**Figure 6.** Potential of cogeneration in Ecuador by type of prime mover suggested (MWel).

**Figure 7.** Potential of cogeneration by cluster of industries (MWel).

**Figure 8.** (**a**) Amount of companies that could adopt trigeneration, and (**b**) contribution (in %) of each cluster to trigeneration (based on a trigeneration potential of 212 MWel).

#### *3.4. Impacts of Cogeneration in Ecuador*

#### 3.4.1. Fuel Consumption, Improvement of Energy E fficiency, and GHG Emissions Reduction

The adoption of cogeneration in Ecuador will require di fferent types of fuels. Due to the lack of NG in the country (the preferred fuel for cogeneration in most countries from tempered regions), in the conditions of this study and considering current fuel availability in Ecuador (See Section 3.2), diesel has been selected. Diesel could comprise approximately 81% of the fuel requirements for cogeneration (if the whole potential of 598 MWel is installed), while biogas and biomass could, together, cover approximately 17% (as shown in Table 7). Biomass fuel is constituted by solid residues generated by the agroindustry (e.g., oil palm and rice), which are abundant biomass resources in the coast region. Although the potential of biomass for cogeneration can be higher than this value, its use deserves more analysis due to the di fficulty of hauling and burning this fuel in industrial plants located in urban areas far away from biomass sources. The potential use of NG for cogeneration is very low (~2%). Because of NG is an important fuel for cogeneration in most countries (due to availability, competitive prices, and cleanliness during burning), Ecuador urgently needs to look for NG as an alternative (at least partially) to diesel. For this purpose, two options are being analyzed in the country: (a) importing NG from neighbor countries such as Peru, which, in addition to its high potential production [45], could also import it from Bolivia, as part of the so-called Latin America Energy Integration [96–98], and (b) exploring the Gulf of Guayaquil for more NG, since there is no certainty about the NG reserves in this part of the country.


Emissions in the SNI

Net GHG (reduction) −296,007 (Total 2)

−576,800

**Table 7.** Types and quantities of fuels required for cogeneration in Ecuador and potential contribution togreenhousegas(GHG)generation/reduction.

Table 7 also shows the electricity that could be produced by type of fuel (column four) and the corresponding potential contribution to GHG emissions (Table 7, column five). The negative sign in the Table indicates avoided GHG emissions, which results from (1) burning biomass and biogas instead of oil-derived fuels to produce electricity (in cogeneration plants), and (2) the avoided methane formation from liquid e ffluents from the oil palm industry. Currently, although the majority of the 35 oil palm companies in the country (See Section 1) are aware about the necessity of using liquid e ffluents for biogas production, these e ffluents are discharged to pools for stabilization prior to final disposal due to the lack of incentives/regulations from the State to use them for energy.

The adoption of cogeneration could promote a reduction 18.55 million L/month (15,556 t/month) of diesel (and/or heavy fuel oil) and avoid up to 576,800 tCO2/year. This value results from considering that the country would need to install and operate a 600 MWel power plant (or several plants with equivalent total capacity) to offset the reduction of hydropower during the dry season and that, instead of installing such thermal power plant, cogeneration in the industry will be adopted. The positive impact of cogeneration in the industrial sector's energy efficiency of the country is proportional to the amount of fuels saved. Thus, in the conditions of this study, the increase in energy efficiency, if the whole cogeneration potential was installed, could reach between 35% and 40%.

The net GHG emissions (i.e., total 1 in Table 7 minus 576,800) could be −296,007 tCO2/year (total 2), showing that installing cogeneration/trigeneration in the industry can be an important strategy to avoid GHG emissions in Ecuador. Figure 9 shows that the clusters in which fuel savings could be higher are the food industry, the beverage industry, and the agroindustry. Further study is necessary for analyzing the environmental positive impacts of changing diesel and natural gas by biodiesel and biogas, respectively. However, Table 7 shows that potential GHG emissions are reduced even using diesel and NG, as a consequence of higher efficiency on burning these fuels in cogeneration plants.

**Figure 9.** Expected fuel savings (by cluster) resulting from the possible adoption of cogeneration.
