Link to the website with documentation and download instructions for the PNNL Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), a community model or long-term, global energy, agriculture, land use, and emissions. BioEnergy production, transformation, and use is an integral part of GCAM modeling and scenarios.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Co-Optimization (Co-Optima) initiative is accelerating the introduction of affordable, scalable, and sustainable fuels and high-efficiency, low-emission engines with a first-of-its-kind effort to simultaneously tackle fuel and engine research and development (R&D).
Abstract: Cellulosic-based biofuels are needed to help meet energy needs and to strengthen rural investment and development in the midwestern United States (US). This analysis identifies 11 categories of indicators to measure progress toward sustainability that should be monitored to determine if ecosystem and social services are being maintained, enhanced, or disrupted by production, harvest, storage, and transport of cellulosic feedstock.
This report provides a status of the markets and technology development involved in growing a domestic bioenergy economy as it existed at the end of calendar year 2013. It compiles and integrates information to provide a snapshot of the current state and historical trends influencing the development of bioenergy markets. This information is intended for policy-makers as well as technology developers and investors tracking bioenergy developments. It also highlights some of the key energy and regulatory drivers of bioenergy markets.
A framework for selecting and evaluating indicators of bioenergy sustainability is presented.
This framework is designed to facilitate decision-making about which indicators are useful for assessing
sustainability of bioenergy systems and supporting their deployment. Efforts to develop sustainability
indicators in the United States and Europe are reviewed. The fi rst steps of the framework for
indicator selection are defi ning the sustainability goals and other goals for a bioenergy project or program,
For analyzing sustainability of algal biofuels, we identify 16 environmental indicators that fall into six categories: soil quality, water quality and quantity, air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, and productivity. Indicators are selected to be practical, widely applicable, predictable in response, anticipatory of future changes, independent of scale, and responsive to management.
Agroecosystem models that can incorporate management practices and quantify environmental effects
are necessary to assess sustainability-associated food and bioenergy production across spatial scales.
However, most agroecosystem models are designed for a plot scale. Tremendous computational capacity
on simulations and datasets is needed when large scales of high-resolution spatial simulations are conducted.
We used the message passing interface (MPI) parallel technique and developed a master–slave
The compatibility of elastomeric materials used in fuel storage and dispensing applications was determined for test fuels
representing neat gasoline and gasoline blends containing 10 and 17 vol.% ethanol, and 16 and 24 vol.% isobutanol. The
actual test fuel chemistries were based on the aggressive formulations described in SAE J1681 for oxygenated gasoline.
Elastomer specimens of fluorocarbon, fluorosilicone, acrylonitrile rubber (NBR), polyurethane, neoprene, styrene
The compatibility of plastic materials used in fuel storage and dispensing applications was determined for test fuels representing gasoline blended with 25 vol.% ethanol and gasoline blended with 16 and 24 vol.% isobutanol. Plastic materials included those used in flexible plastic piping and fiberglass resins. Other commonly used plastic materials were also evaluated. The plastic specimens were exposed to Fuel C, CE25a, CiBu16a, and CiBu24a for 16 weeks at 60oC.
Landscape design provides an approach under which bioenergy production systems can be integrated into other components of the land, environment and socioeconomic system. Landscape design is a spatially explicit collaborative plan for resource allocation and management. It should be applied to a particular area and developed with the involvement of key stakeholders.
Potential global biodiversity impacts from near-term gasoline production are compared to biofuel, a renewable liquid transportation fuel expected to substitute for gasoline in the near term (i.e., from now until c.
The sustainability of future bioenergy production rests on more than continual improvements in its environmental, economic, and social impacts. The emergence of new biomass feedstocks, an expanding array of conversion pathways, and expected increases in overall bioenergy production are connecting diverse technical, social, and policy communities. These stakeholder groups have different—and potentially conflicting—values and cultures, and therefore different goals and decision making processes. Our aim is to discuss the implications of this diversity for bioenergy researchers.
This article summarises the compatibility of six elastomers – used in fuel
storage and delivery systems – with test fuels representing gasoline blended
with up to 85% ethanol. Individual coupons were exposed to test fuels for four
weeks to achieve saturation. The change in volume and hardness, when wetted
and after drying, were measured and compared with the original condition.
Indicators of the environmental sustainability of biofuel production, distribution, and use should be selected, measured, and interpreted with respect to the context in which they are used. The context of a sustainability assessment includes the purpose, the particular biofuel production and distribution system, policy conditions, stakeholder values, location, temporal influences, spatial scale, baselines, and reference scenarios.
The production of biobased feedstocks (i.e., plant– or algal-based material use for transportation fuels, heat, power and bioproducts) for energy consumption has been expanding rapidly in recent years. Biomass now accounts for 4.1% of total U.S. primary energy production. Unfortunately, there are considerable knowledge gaps relative to implications of this industry expansion for wildlife.
Indicators are needed to assess environmental sustainability of bioenergy systems. Effective indicators
will help in the quantification of benefits and costs of bioenergy options and resource uses. We identify
19 measurable indicators for soil quality, water quality and quantity, greenhouse gases, biodiversity, air
quality, and productivity, building on existing knowledge and on national and international programs
that are seeking ways to assess sustainable bioenergy. Together, this suite of indicators is hypothesized
Landscape ecology focuses on the spatial patterns and processes of ecological and human interactions. These patterns and processes are being altered by both changing resource-management practices of humans and changing climate conditions associated, in part, with increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Dominant resource-extraction and land-management activities involve energy, and the use of fossil energy is one of the key drivers behind increasing greenhouse gas emissions as well as land-use changes.
Land-use change (LUC) estimated by economic models has sparked intense international debate. Models estimate how much LUC might be induced under prescribed scenarios and rely on assumptions to generate LUC values. It is critical to test and validate underlying
Country borders have been chosen as system boundaries to inventory GHG emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. The use of country boundaries is clear and allows summing over all countries. The country inventories purposefully account for where and when both fossil-fuel combustion emissions occur, and changes in the biological stocks of carbon occur. The approach can be widely adopted, but this accounting is hampered by uncertain data (1, 2) and two basic shortcomings: Not all countries are required to report, and not all biological carbon stocks are inventoried.