KDF Search Results

This spreadsheet serves as an Input file to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Waste-to-Energy System Simulation (WESyS) model developed in Stella Pro (isee systems, Lebanon, NH). WESyS is a national-level system dynamics model that simulates energy production from three sectors of the U.S. waste-to-energy industry: landfills, confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), and publically owned treatment works (POTWs).

The Regional Feedstock Partnership (the Partnership) has published a report to summarize its accomplishments from 2008–2014. DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) partnered with the Sun Grant Initiative and Idaho National Laboratory to co-author this report.

The 2016 Billion-Ton Report: Advancing Domestic Resources for a Thriving Bioeconomy is the third in a series of Energy Department national assessments that have calculated the potential supply of biomass in the United States. The report concludes that the United States has the future potential to produce at least one billion dry tons of biomass resources (composed of agricultural, forestry, waste, and algal materials) on an annual basis without adversely affecting the environment.

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.

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.

The use of plant biomass for energy has existed since humans mastered the use of fire, although utilization beyond the open fire has evolved. The concept of using recent biomass as a major energy feedstock is being revisited, driven by high consumer demand (growing population), declining domestic oil supplies, increasing cost of fossil fuels, and a desire to curb the emission of greenhouse gases (Johnson et al., 2007b).

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

United States is experiencing increasing interests in fermentation and anaerobic digestion processes for the production of biofuels. A simple methodology of spatial biomass assessment is presented in this paper to evaluate biofuel production and support the first decisions about the conversion technology applications. The methodology was applied to evaluate the potential biogas and ethanol production from biomass in California and Washington states. Solid waste databases were filtered to a short list of digestible and fermentable wastes in both states.

Adding bioenergy to the U.S. energy portfolio requires long‐term profitability for bioenergy producers and
long‐term protection of affected ecosystems. In this study, we present steps along the path toward evaluating both sides of
the sustainability equation (production and environmental) for switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) using the Soil and Water
Assessment Tool (SWAT). We modeled production of switchgrass and river flow using SWAT for current landscapes at a

Meeting the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) renewable fuels goals requires development
of a large sustainable domestic supply of diverse biomass feedstocks. Macroalgae, also known as
seaweed, could be a potential contributor toward this goal. This resource would be grown in marine
waters under U.S. jurisdiction and would not compete with existing land-based energy crops.
Very little analysis has been done on this resource to date. This report provides information needed for an

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.

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.

The Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) at the University of Wisconsin has been developing global databases of contemporary and historical agricultural land use and land cover. SAGE has chosen to focus on agriculture because it is clearly the predominant land use activity on the planet today, and provides a vital service?i.e., food?for human societies. SAGE has developed a ?data fusion?

A working paper review of current approaches to accounting for indirect land-use changes in green house gas balances of biofuels. This report reviews the current effort made worldwide to address this issue. A
description of land-use concepts is first provided (Section 2) followed by a classification of
ILUC sources (Section 3). Then, a discussion on the implications of including ILUC
emissions in the GHG balance of biofuel pathways (Section 4) and a review of methodologies
being developed to quantify indirect land-use change (Section 5) are presented. Section 6

Biofuels from land-rich tropical countries may help displace foreign petroleum imports for many industrialized nations, providing a possible solution to the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. But concern is mounting that crop-based biofuels will increase net greenhouse gas emissions if feedstocks are produced by expanding agricultural lands. Here we quantify the ?carbon payback time? for a range of biofuel crop expansion pathways in the tropics.

Land-use changes are frequently indicated to be one of the main human-induced factors influencing the groundwater system. For land-use change, groundwater research has mainly focused on the change in water quality thereby neglecting changes in quantity. The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of land-use changes, from 2000 until 2020, on the hydrological balance and in particular on groundwater quantity, as results from a case study in the Kleine Nete basin, Belgium.

In this paper we investigate the potential production and implications of a global biofuels industry. We develop alternative approaches to the introduction of land as an economic factor input, in value and physical terms, into a computable general equilibrium framework. Both approach allows us to parameterize biomass production in a manner consistent with agro-engineering information on yields and a ?second generation? cellulosic biomass conversion technology.

The preceding two chapters of this volume have discussed physical and economic data bases for global agriculture and forestry, respectively. These form the foundation for the integrated, global land use data base discussed in this chapter. However, in order to utilize these data for global CGE analysis, it is first necessary to integrate them into a global, general equilibrium data base. This integration is the subject of the present chapter

When we think about sustainable bioenergy feedstocks in the United States, we ask ourselves what we will grow, where we will grow it, and how much we will grow. We also must consider the local as well as the broad-scale implications. From the perspective of landscape ecology, we tend to look at the broader scales. It is one of the big challenges of bioenergy, not just looking at what happens to the local farmer but thinking about broader implications. From a global perspective, we also need to ask the same questinos, how much, what type and where?

The Biomass Program is one of the nine technology development programs within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This 2011 Multi-Year Program Plan (MYPP) sets forth the goals and structure of the Biomass Program. It identifies the research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D) activities the Program will focus on over the next five years, and outlines why these activities are important to meeting the energy and sustainability challenges facing the nation.