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.
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.
We present a system dynamics global LUC model intended to examine LUC attributed to biofuel production. The model has major global land system stocks and flows and can be exercised under different food and biofuel demand assumptions. This model provides insights into the drivers and dynamic interactions of LUC, population, dietary choices, and biofuel policy rather than a precise number generator.
The estimation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a change in land-use and management resulting from growing biofuel feedstocks has undergone extensive – and often contentious – scientific and policy debate. Emergent renewable fuel policies require life cycle GHG emission accounting that includes biofuel-induced global land-use change (LUC) GHG emissions. However, the science of LUC generally, and biofuels-induced LUC specifically, is nascent and underpinned with great uncertainty.
Provides a summary of the key findings of the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources (SRREN) and Climate Change Mitigation.
The IPCC SRREN report addresses information needs of policymakers, the private sector and civil society on the potential of renewable energy sources for the mitigation of climate change, providing a comprehensive assessment of renewable energy technologies and related policy and financial instruments. The IPCC report was a multinational collaboration and synthesis of peer reviewed information: Reviewed, analyzed, coordinated, and integrated current high quality information.
Traffic flows in the U.S. have been affected by the substantial increase and, as of January 2009, decrease in biofuel production and use. This paper considers a framework to study the effect on grain transportation flows of the 2005 Energy Act and subsequent legislation, which mandated higher production levels of biofuels, e.g. ethanol and biodiesels. Future research will incorporate changes due to the recent economic slowdown.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) originally developed this application for biopower with funding from the Environmental Protection Agency's Blue Skyways Collaborative. The Department of Energy's Office of Biomass Program provided funding for biofuels functionality. More information on funding agencies is available: http://www.blueskyways.org and http://www.eere.energy.gov/biomass/.
Many investigators need and use global land cover maps for a wide variety of purposes. Ironically, after many years of very limited availability, there are now multiple global land cover maps and it is not readily apparent (1) which is most useful for particular applications or (2) how to combine the different maps to provide an improved dataset. The existing global land cover maps at 1 km spatial resolution have arisen from different initiatives and are based on different remote sensing data and employed different methodologies. Perhaps more significantly, they have different legends.