Assessing the Integration of Biomass Gasification and High-Power Charging Stations for Battery Electric Buses: A Case Study in the City of Carpi

The shift to electric vehicles in transportation is essential to mitigate pollution and achieve global climate goals.Recent EU regulations and incentives have accelerated the adoption of this strategy, especially in cities, facilitating the development of fleets of electric city buses.This paper explores the integration of biomass gasifiers and battery energy storage systems to develop environmentally sustainable high-power charging stations, focusing on Carpi, Italy, as a case study.By using locally available biomass resources, this approach aims to disconnect power from the electricity grid and reduce emissions.Through the analysis of different configurations, the study demonstrates once again how the economic sustainability of projects based on biomass gasifiers is strongly dependent both on the cost of biomass and the current energy market with which it competes.Only extending the use of the charging station to private vehicles generates a return on investment of around 7 years.However, through gasification is possible to achieve carbon capture and storage that, in the analyzed case study, is almost equivalent to the annual CO2eq emission of 4 diesel buses.