The Bioenergy Technologies Office hosted a workshop on Incorporating Bioenergy into Sustainable Landscape Designs on June 24-26 in partnership with Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. Landscape design offers a promising means for sustainably increasing bioenergy production while maintaining or enhancing other ecosystem services.
The Bioenergy Technologies Office hosted two workshops on Incorporating Bioenergy into Sustainable Landscape Designs with Oak Ridge and Argonne National Laboratories. The first workshop focused on forestry landscapes and was held in New Bern, NC, from March 4-6, 2014. The second workshop focused on agricultural landscapes and was held in Argonne, IL, from June 24-26, 2014. Landscape design offers a promising means for sustainably increasing bioenergy production while maintaining or enhancing other ecosystem services.
The Bioenergy Technologies Office hosted a workshop on Incorporating Bioenergy into Sustainable Landscape Designs on March 4-6 in partnership with Oak Ridge and Argonne National Laboratories. Landscape design offers a promising means for sustainably increasing bioenergy production while maintaining or enhancing other ecosystem services.
The database summarizes a very broad set of old and new standing biomass data from plantation-grown hardwoods and softwoods established under a wide range of conditions across the United States and Canada. The WCYP database, together with this document, is being published to disseminate information on what is available in the literature with respect to yield evaluations and to inform people that not all yield data in the open literature are suitable for evaluation of “potential” regional yields.
A woody crop yield potential (WCYP) database was created containing yield results with as much associated information as was available concerning the sites, soils, and experimental treatments. The database summarizes a very broad set of old and new standing biomass data from plantation-grown hardwoods and softwoods established under a wide range of conditions across the United States and Canada.
Biofuels are promoted in the United States through aggressive legislation, as one part of an overall strategy to lessen dependence on imported energy as well as to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (Office of the Biomass Program and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, 2008). For example, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) mandates 36 billion gallons of renewable liquid transportation fuel in the U.S. marketplace by the year 2022 (U.S. Government, 2007).
We quantify the emergence of biofuel markets and its impact on U.S. and world agriculture for the coming decade using the multi-market, multi-commodity international FAPRI (Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute) model. The model incorporates the trade-offs between biofuel, feed, and food production and consumption and international feedback effects of the emergence through world commodity prices and trade.
The harvest of corn stover or herbaceous crops as feedstocks for bioenergy purposes has been shown to have significant benefits from energy and climate change perspectives. There is a potential, however, to adversely impact water and soil quality, especially in Midwestern states where the biomass feedstock production would predominantly occur.
This study presents the results of comparing land use estimates between three different data sets for the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). The comparisons were performed between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) National Resource Inventory (NRI), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Land Cover Data (NLCD) database, and a combined USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) Agricultural Census – NLCD dataset created to support applications of the Hydrologic Unit Model for the U.S. (HUMUS).
National interests in greater energy independence, concurrent with favorable market forces, have driven increased production of corn-based ethanol in the United States and research into the next generation of biofuels. The trend is changing the national agricultural landscape and has raised concerns about potential impacts on the nation?s water resources. This report examines some of the key issues and identifies opportunities for shaping policies that help to protect water resources.
Land-use change models are important tools for integrated environmental management. Through scenario analysis they can help to identify near-future critical locations in the face of environmental change. A dynamic, spatially explicit, land-use change model is presented for the regional scale: CLUE-S. The model is specifically developed for the analysis of land use in small regions (e.g., a watershed or province) at a fine spatial resolution.
Power generation emits significant amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs), mainly carbon dioxide (CO2). Sequestering CO2 from the power plant flue gas can significantly reduce the GHGs from the power plant itself, but this is not the total picture. CO2 capture and sequestration consumes additional energy, thus lowering the plant's fuel-to-electricity efficiency. To compensate for this, more fossil fuel must be procured and consumed to make up for lost capacity.
Land-use change models are used by researchers and professionals to explore the dynamics and drivers of land-use/land-cover change and to inform policies affecting such change. A broad array of models and modeling methods are available to researchers, and each type has certain advantages and disadvantages depending on the objective of the research. This report presents a review of different types of models as a means of exploring the functionality and ability of different approaches.
This paper presents an overview of multi-agent system models of land-use/cover change (MAS/LUCC models). This special class of LUCC models combines a cellular landscape model with agent-based representations of decisionmaking, integrating the two components through specification of interdependencies and feedbacks between agents and their environment. The authors review alternative LUCC modeling techniques and discuss the ways in which MAS/LUCC models may overcome some important limitations of existing techniques. We briefly review ongoing MAS/LUCC modeling efforts in four research areas.
Until recently, advanced very high-resolution radiometer (AVHRR) observations were the only viable source of data for global land cover mapping. While many useful insights have been gained from analyses based on AVHRR data, the availability of moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data with greatly improved spectral, spatial, geometric, and radiometric attributes provides significant new opportunities and challenges for remote sensing-based land cover mapping research.
Biomass is a significant contributor to the US economy--agriculture, forest and paper products, food and related products account for 5% of our GDP. While the forest products industry self generates some of their energy, other sectors are importers. Bioenergy can contribute to economic development and to the environment. Examples of bioenergy routes suggest that atmospheric carbon can be cycled through biofuels in carefully designed systems for sustainability. Significant potential exists for these options.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is promoting the development of ethanol from lignocellulosic feedstocks as an alternative to conventional petroleum-based transportation fuels. DOE funds both fundamental and applied research in this area and needs a method for predicting cost benefits of many research proposals. To that end, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has modeled many potential process designs and estimated the economics of each process during the last 20 years. This report is an update of the ongoing process design and economic analyses at NREL.
A new addition to the growing biofuels resources list at AgMRC is a cellulosic ethanol feasibility template developed by agricultural economists at Oklahoma State University (OSU). The purpose of the spreadsheet-based template is to give users the opportunity to assess the economics of a commercial-scale plant using enzymatic hydrolysis methods to process cellulosic materials into ethanol. The OSU Cellulosic Ethanol Feasibility Template can be downloaded and modified by the user to mimic the basic operating parameters of a proposed ethanol plant under a variety of production conditions.
This paper examines the possibilities of breaking into the cellulosic ethanol market in south Louisiana via strategic feedstock choices and the leveraging of the area’s competitive advantages. A small plant strategy is devised whereby the first-mover problem might be solved, and several scenarios are tested using Net Present Value analysis.