EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool that may be used to quantify the environmental impacts of products and services. It includes all processes, from cradle-to-grave, along the supply chain of the product. When analysing energy systems, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (primarily CO2, CH4 and N2O) are the impact of primary concern. In using LCA to determine the climate change mitigation benefits of bioenergy, the life cycle emissions of the bioenergy system are compared with the emissions for a reference energy system.
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Agricultural markets often feature significant transport costs and spatially distributed production and processing which causes spatial imperfect competition. Spatial economics considers the firms’ decisions regarding location and spatial price strategy separately, usually on the demand side, and under restrictive assumptions. Therefore, alternative approaches are needed to explain, e.g., the location of new ethanol plants in the U.S. at peripheral as well as at central locations and the observation of different spatial price strategies in the market.
IBSAL is a dynamic simulation model of the connections existing between feedstock producers, biorefinery locations and the requisite storage and distribution systems. The model is primarily focused on the front end of the biofuels supply chain at the local level. The local data sources that are inputs include field area, dry matter, production equipment, soil and biomass moisture, weather conditions, transportation networks and associated costs. The model was developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
This model can be downloaded from