This is a joint report between three national labs, ORNL, INL, and ANL, that describes outcomes from a workshop. The Bioenergy Solutions to Gulf Hypoxia Workshop gathered stakeholders from industry, academia, national laboratories, and U.S. federal agencies to discuss how biomass feedstocks could help decrease nutrient loadings to the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf), a root cause of the large hypoxic zone that forms each summer.
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One approach to assessing progress towards sustainability makes use of multiple indicators spanning the
environmental, social, and economic dimensions of the system being studied. Diverse indicators have different
units of measurement, and normalization is the procedure employed to transform differing indicator
measures onto similar scales or to unit-free measures. Given the inherent complexity entailed in interpreting
information related to multiple indicators, normalization and aggregation of sustainability indicators
There is an inextricable link between energy production and food/feed/fiber cultivation with available water resources. Currently in the United States, agriculture represents the largest sector of consumptivewater usemaking up 80.7%of the total. Electricity generation in the U.S. is projected to increase by 24 % in the next two decades and globally, the production of liquid transportation fuels are forecasted to triple over the next 25-years, having significant impacts on the import/export market and global economies.
Excess nutrients from agriculture in the Mississippi River drainage, USA have degraded water quality in
freshwaters and contributed to anoxic conditions in downstream estuaries. Consequently, water quality is a
significant concern associated with conversion of lands to bioenergy production. This study focused on the
Arkansas-White-Red river basin (AWR), one of five major river basins draining to the Mississippi River. The
AWR has a strong precipitation gradient from east to west, and advanced cellulosic feedstocks are projected to
In order to aid operations that promote sustainability goals, researchers and stakeholders use sustainability assessments. Although assessments take various forms, many utilize diverse sets of indicators numbering anywhere from two to over 2000. Indices, composite indicators, or aggregate values are used to simplify high dimensional and complex data sets and to clarify assessment results. Although the choice of aggregation function is a key component in the development of the assessment, there are fewliterature examples to guide appropriate
Water sustainability is an integral part of the environmental sustainability. Water use, water quality, and the demand on water resource for bioenergy production can have potential impacts to food, feed, and fiber production and to our social well-being. With the support from United State Department of Energy, Argonne National Laboratory is developing a life cycle water use assessment tool for biofuels production at the national scale with multiple spatial resolutions.
This paper describes the development of a set of U.S. county-based vehicle miles of travel and motor fuel use estimates and forecasts. The forecasts are short range, annual forecasts out to year 2015. A range of forecasts can be generated based on different assumptions associated with household travel growth and alternative fuel use scenarios.
A Workshop for Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and their collaborators was held on September 10-11, 2009 at ORNL. The informal workshop focused on “Sustainability of Bioenergy Systems: Cradle to Grave.” The topics covered included sustainability issues associated with feedstock production and transport, production of biofuels and by-products, and delivery and consumption by the end users.
Illinois VMT data.
Arizona vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is available here.
Daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by county for Colorado is available here.
Florida vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is available here.
California traffic counts, such as vehicle miles of travel (VMT) and average annual daily (AAD) traffic data can be found here.
Oregon vehicle miles traveled data is available here.
Minnesota vehicle miles traveled data is available here.
Iowa Vehicle Miles Traveled data.
Wisconsin VMT data.