KDF Search Results

Logging and mill residues are currently the largest sources of woody biomass for bioenergy in the US, but short-rotation woody crops (SRWCs) are expected to become a larger contributor to biomass production, primarily on lands marginal for food production. However, there are very few studies on the environmental effects of SRWCs, and most have been conducted at stand rather than at watershed scales.

Advanced biomass feedstocks tend to provide more non-fuel ecosystem goods and services (ES) than 1st-generation alternatives. We explore the idea that payment for non-fuel ES could facilitate market penetration of advanced biofuels by closing the profitability gap. As a specific example, we discuss the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin (MARB), where 1st-generation bioenergy feedstocks (e.g., corn-grain) have been integrated into the agricultural landscape.

Join the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office on Dec. 6, 2018, at 1 p.m. CST for a webinar on “Biomass Production and Water Quality in the Mississippi River Basin.” In this webinar, Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory will jointly present modeling and analyses of potential implications of biomass production on nutrients and sediments in each of the six tributaries of the Mississippi River Basin.

Synthesis manuscript for an Ecology & Society Special Feature on Telecoupling: A New Frontier for Global Sustainability

Abstract

Model-data comparisons are always challenging, especially when working at a large spatial scale and evaluating multiple response variables. We implemented the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to simulate water quantity and quality for the Tennessee River Basin.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Co-Optimization (Co-Optima) initiative is accelerating the introduction of affordable, scalable, and sustainable fuels and high-efficiency, low-emission engines with a first-of-its-kind effort to simultaneously tackle fuel and engine research and development (R&D).

This dataset reports the pre-treatment hydrology and pre- and post-treatment water quality data from a watershed-scale experiment that is evaluating the effects of growing short-rotation loblolly pine for bioenergy on water quality and quantity in the southeastern U.S. The experiment is taking place on the Savannah River Site, near New Ellenton, South Carolina, USA.  Beginning in 2010, water quality and hydrology were measured for two years in 3 watersheds (R, B, C).

Understanding the complex interactions among food security, bioenergy sustainability, and resource management
requires a focus on specific contextual problems and opportunities. The United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable
Development Goals place a high priority on food and energy security; bioenergy plays an important role in
achieving both goals. Effective food security programs begin by clearly defining the problem and asking, ‘What
can be done to assist people at high risk?’ Simplistic global analyses, headlines, and cartoons that blame biofuels

Abstract: Cellulosic-based biofuels are needed to help meet energy needs and to strengthen rural investment and development in the midwestern United States (US). This analysis identifies 11 categories of indicators to measure progress toward sustainability that should be monitored to determine if ecosystem and social services are being maintained, enhanced, or disrupted by production, harvest, storage, and transport of cellulosic feedstock.

This report provides a status of the markets and technology development involved in growing a domestic bioenergy economy as it existed at the end of calendar year 2013. It compiles and integrates information to provide a snapshot of the current state and historical trends influencing the development of bioenergy markets. This information is intended for policy-makers as well as technology developers and investors tracking bioenergy developments. It also highlights some of the key energy and regulatory drivers of bioenergy markets.

This report summarizes the results of an IEA Bioenergy inter-Task project involving collaborators from Tasks 37 (Energy from Biogas), 38 (Climate Change Effects of Biomass and Bioenergy Systems), 39 (Commercialising Conventional and Advanced Liquid Biofuels from Biomass), 40 (Sustainable International Bioenergy Trade: Securing Supply and Demand), 42 (Biorefining – Sustainable Processing of Biomass into a Spectrum of Marketable Bio-based Products and Bioenergy), and 43 (Biomass Feedstocks for Energy Markets).

Global development of the biofuel sector is proceeding rapidly. Biofuel feedstock continues to be produced from a variety of agricultural and forestry resources. Large-scale feedstock production for biofuels could change the landscape structure and affect water quantity, water quality, and ecosystem services in positive or negative ways. With rapid advancements in computation technologies and science, field- and watershed-scale models have become a vital tool for quantifying water quality and ecosystem responses to bioenergy landscape and management practices.

Using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) for large-scale watershed modeling could be useful for evaluating the quality of the water in regions that are dominated by nonpoint sources in order to identify potential “hot spots” for which mitigating strategies could be further developed. An analysis of water quality under future scenarios in which changes in land use would be made to accommodate increased biofuel production was developed for the Missouri River Basin (MoRB) based on a SWAT model application.

Water consumption and water quality continue to be key factors affecting environmental sustainability in biofuel production. This review covers the findings from biofuel water analyses published over the past 2 years to underscore the progress made, and to highlight advancements in understanding the interactions among increased production and water demand, water resource availability, and potential changes in water quality. We focus on two key areas: water footprint assessment and watershed modeling.

Peer-reviewed letter written in response to a March 11, 2015, letter to US EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy (http://bit.ly/1HsSaWf), in which the Ecological Society of America objected to EPA’s proposal that sustainably harvested woody biomass could reduce carbon emissions.

A framework for selecting and evaluating indicators of bioenergy sustainability is presented.
This framework is designed to facilitate decision-making about which indicators are useful for assessing
sustainability of bioenergy systems and supporting their deployment. Efforts to develop sustainability
indicators in the United States and Europe are reviewed. The fi rst steps of the framework for
indicator selection are defi ning the sustainability goals and other goals for a bioenergy project or program,

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.

Agroecosystem models that can incorporate management practices and quantify environmental effects
are necessary to assess sustainability-associated food and bioenergy production across spatial scales.
However, most agroecosystem models are designed for a plot scale. Tremendous computational capacity
on simulations and datasets is needed when large scales of high-resolution spatial simulations are conducted.
We used the message passing interface (MPI) parallel technique and developed a master–slave

As U.S. energy policy turns to bioenergy, and second-generation biofuels in particular, to foster energy security and environmental benefits, consideration should be given to the implications of climate risk for the incipient bioenergy industry. As a case-in-point, we review evidence from the 2012 U.S. drought, underscoring the risk of extreme weather events to the agricultural sector in general, and the bioenergy supply chain in particular, including reductions in feedstock production and higher prices for agricultural commodities and biofuels.