BeWhere Model: A Spatially Explicit System Optimization Tool

About BeWhere

Developed at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) since 2007, BeWhere is continuously evolving to incorporate state-of-the-art technologies and new assessment frameworks, ensuring its relevance in analyzing emerging low-carbon solutions. It is widely applied across diverse research domains, including:

• Bio-based systems: Advancing the bioeconomy through the sustainable utilization of biomass resources, including e.g., wood waste, modern food systems, crop residues, and lignocellulosic industrial byproducts. BeWhere supports their use in energy production, biofuels, material applications, and timber-based construction (aligned with the New European and Global Bauhaus principles), while evaluating the long-term carbon storage potential of wood products in buildings.
• Renewable-based system: Assessing the power systems and grid expansion to ensure efficient integration of renewables such as bioenergy, solar, wind, hydro, geo-thermal including various low/zero/negative emission technologies. The holistic framework includes in-depth spatio-temporal assessments considering multi-sectoral demands, particularly addressing “hard-to-abate” sectors by assessing supply chain cost of producing synthetic fuels and green hydrogen for aviation, marine, heavy industries to support sustainable energy transitions,
• System assessments (evaluating ecosystem services, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques, cost-effective long-term carbon storage technologies, system flexibility, risks, value webs, network expansion and sector-coupling) supporting overall system expansion, planning and optimization.

BeWhere Output

BeWhere optimizes the location and capacity of low-carbon technologies, system expansion planning, and energy/resource flows across sectors within a spatially explicit and temporally resolved framework at local, regional, and global scales (e.g., applications in Alpine Region, Pan-Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and New Zealand). The model integrates trade dynamics, optimizing supply chain infrastructure such as bio-refineries, power grids, transportation & logistics (pipelines). It employs an integrated framework assessment to evaluate technological, economic, and environmental trade-offs while considering policy instruments (e.g., carbon pricing, environmental regulations, and climate pathways (SSPs/RCPs) to ensure forward-looking analysis up to 2100.

BeWhere at a Glance

At its core, BeWhere employs mixed integer linear programming (MILP) and optimizes the entire supply chain, from resource extraction to processing and to final distribution, considering the optimal transportation, trade ports, import, and export at all stages, ensuring a cost-efficient, low-emission transition.

• BeWhere addresses key challenges of energy-land-water-food nexus by incorporating spatial constraints, resource availability, and land-use dynamics in its analytical framework.
• BeWhere assesses the economic and environmental benefits of substituting renewable energy for fossil-fuel-based production.
• BeWhere allows to efficiently integrate renewables and assess CDR technologies in multi-sectors, especially, to “hard-to-abate” sectors.
• BeWhere investigates the cost of CO2 capture, storage and transport, a technology that could ultimately lead to negative carbon emissions. 
• BeWhere is linked with the D-RESET, socio-economic model, to assess how spatial deployment of Carbon Capture (CC-Utilization) technologies in a circular carbon economy affects marginal production costs, sectoral adoption, and overall welfare
• BeWhere is spatially explicit and runs at multiple geographic scales: local, national, regional, continental, global
• Participants in  IIASA's YSSP - Young Scientists Summer Program have contributed to the development of BeWhere since 2008

The model services include:

• Resource Assessment & Processing: Mapping and quantifying different feedstocks such as renewable energy potential (biomass, solar, wind, hydro power, hydrogen), and optimizing feedstock selection and pre-processing.
• Energy Demand & Technology Integration: Determining the optimal deployment of conversion technologies for producing heat, materials, biofuels, synthetic (e-) fuels, hydrogen, DACs and bio and renewable electricity, while considering multi-sectoral integrated framework.
• Logistics & Supply Chain Optimization: Incorporating trade ports and routes between countries, transportation costs, and multi-transport option (road, rail, shipping, pipelines) to ensure efficient resource flow from supply to demand centers.
• Infrastructure Planning & Development: Assessing the techno-economic feasibility of constructing new infrastructure and retrofitting the existing infrastructure, such as hydrogen, CO₂ pipelines, and power lines to support large scale deployment of clean technologies such as Power-to-X.
• Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) Assessment: Comprehensive assessment of low-carbon bioenergy combined with CCS (BECCS) and DACs for generating negative emissions, i.e. land-based CDR technologies applied together with biophysical AFE models G4M, FLAM, and EPIC.

The model is under constant development. By integrating spatial, temporal, ecosystem, logistics, technical and economic constraints, BeWhere enables policymakers and industry stakeholders to identify least-cost strategies to transit into low-emission systems, particularly for deploying clean energy technologies, their optimal sitings in future energy systems. With its holistic supply chain

approach, BeWhere serves as a decision-support tool for governments, energy planners, and industries, ensuring that the transition to a low-carbon economy is cost-effective, scalable, and logistically feasible while considering infrastructure, nature restoration, ecosystem and logistics constraints.

Ongoing and Relevant Past Projects