The biobased economy is playing an increasingly important role in the American economy.
Through innovations in renewable energies and the emergence of a new generation of biobased products, the sectors that drive the biobased economy are providing job creation and economic growth. To further understand and analyze trends in the biobased economy, this report compares 2011 and 2016 report data.
Social and economic indicators can be used to support design of sustainable energy systems. Indicators representing categories of social well-being, energy security, external trade, profitability, resource conservation, and social acceptability have not yet been measured in published sustainability assessments for commercial algal biofuel facilities.
A global energy crop productivity model that provides geospatially explicit quantitative details on biomass
potential and factors affecting sustainability would be useful, but does not exist now. This study describes a
modeling platform capable of meeting many challenges associated with global-scale agro-ecosystem modeling.
We designed an analytical framework for bioenergy crops consisting of six major components: (i) standardized
natural resources datasets, (ii) global field-trial data and crop management practices, (iii) simulation units and
Developing scientific criteria and indicators should play a critical role in charting a sustainable path for the rapidly developing biofuel industry. The challenge ahead in developing such criteria and indicators is to address the limitations on data and modeling.
The Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model is the part of the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM) that represents the human systems. EPPA is a recursive-dynamic multi-regional general equilibrium model of the world economy, which is built on the GTAP dataset and additional data for the greenhouse gas and urban gas emissions. It is designed to develop projections of economic growth and anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse related gases and aerosols. The main purpose of this report is to provide documentation of a new version of EPPA, EPPA version 4.
This paper offers a graphical exposition of the GTAP model of global trade. Particular emphasis is placed on the accounting, or equilibrium, relationships in the model. It begins with a treatment of the a one region version of GTAP, thereafter adding a rest of world region to highlight the treatment of trade flows in the model. The implementation of policy instruments in GTAP is also explored, using simple supply-demand graphics. The material provided in this paper was first developed as an introduction to GTAP for participants taking the annual short course.
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.
The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 established specific targets for the production of biofuel in the United States. Until advanced technologies become commercially viable, meeting these targets will increase demand for traditional agricultural commodities used to produce ethanol, resulting in land-use, production, and price changes throughout the farm sector. This report summarizes the estimated effects of meeting the EISA targets for 2015 on regional agricultural production and the environment. Meeting EISA targets for ethanol production is estimated to expand U.S.
This paper examines the impact of biofuel expansion on grain utilization and distribution at the state and cropping district level as most of grain producers and handlers are directly influenced by the local changes. We conducted a survey to understand the utilization and flows of corn, ethanol and its co-products, such as dried distillers grains (DDG) in Iowa. Results suggest that the rapidly expanding ethanol industry has a significant impact on corn utilization in Iowa.
This paper examines the impact of declining energy prices on biofuels production and use and its implications to agricultural commodity markets. It uses PEATSim, a dynamic partial equilibrium, multi-commodity, multi-country global trade model of the agriculture sector to analyze the interaction between biofuel, crop and livestock sectors. The ability of countries to achieve their energy goals will be affected by future direction of petroleum prices.
PEATSim (Partial Equilibrium Agricultural Trade Simulation) is a dynamic, partial equilibrium, mathematical-based model that enables users to reach analytical solutions to problems, given a set of parameters, data, and initial
conditions. This theoretical tool developed by ERS incorporates a wide range of domestic and border policies that enables it to estimate the market and trade effects of policy changes on agricultural markets. PEATSim captures
This article addresses development of the Illinois ethanol industry through the period 2007-2022, responding to the ethanol production mandates of the Renewable Fuel Standard by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The planning for corn-based and cellulosic ethanol production requires integrated decisions on transportation, plant location, and capacity.
A system of equations representing corn supply, feed demand, export demand, food, alcohol and industrial (FAI) demand, and corn price is estimated by three-stage least squares. A price dependent reduced form equation is then formed to investigate the effect of ethanol production on the national average corn price. The elasticity of corn price with respect to ethanol production is then obtained. Results suggest that ethanol production has a positive impact on the national corn price and that the demand from FAI has a greater impact on the corn price than other demand categories.
Events external to agriculture have set in motion the conditions for structural change in the marketing of corn in the U.S. These included a rapid increase in the price of crude oil from $40 per barrel to over $100 caused by hurricanes, geopolitical events, an increased global demand for energy from countries like China and India, and in December 2007, the U.S. raising the renewable fuel standards. The results of this research show that there could be significant changes in the historical utilization and marketing of corn in the U.S.
This study focuses on the simulation of a complete process for producing butanol via
acetone, butanol, and ethanol corn fermentation.
This paper summarizes some of the major impacts rapid growth in the corn
based ethanol (CE) production is now having on infrastructure in the Midwestern corn
producing states and examines some of the likely infrastructure needs that might be
expected to occur as a consequence of the future development of biomass based ethanol (BE) production