When the lignocellulosic biofuels industry reaches maturity and many types of biomass sources become economically viable, management of multiple feedstock supplies – that vary in their yields, density (tons per unit area), harvest window, storage and seasonal costs, storage losses, transport distance to the production plant – will become increasingly important for the success of individual enterprises. The manager’s feedstock procurement problem is modeled as a multi-period sequence problem to account for dynamic management over time.
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In this study we use data envelopment analysis to decompose the overall economic efficiency of a sample of ethanol plants into three subcomponents: technical efficiency, allocative efficiency and a new component we call marketing efficiency. The relative importance of these sources of efficiency is of particular interest given the recent history of bankruptcies, plant closings and ownership change in the industry. Results reveal that observed production units are very efficient from a technical point of view as suggested by a standard deviation of 1% in technical efficiency.
Energy security and environmental concerns about global climate change have lead to recent growth in the use of bio-fuels in the U.S. Brazil currently exports a substantial share of its sugarcane based ethanol to the U.S. to support the growing demand for bio-fuels. However, U.S. policies that exogenously affect the bio-fuel sector confound the understanding of the multi-market impacts of a growing bio-fuel demand. Moreover, the various forms of government intervention in the bio-fuel economy leave researchers with unclear conclusions about the prospects for bio-fuels.
FAOSTAT provides time-series and cross sectional data relating to food and agriculture for some 200 countries.
The national version of FAOSTAT, CountrySTAT, is being developed and implemented in a number of target countries, primarily in sub-saharan Africa. It will offer a two-way data exchange facility between countries and FAO as well as a facility to store data at the national and sub-national levels.
This database contains current and historical official USDA data on production, supply and distribution of agricultural commodities for the United States and key producing and consuming countries.
The purpose of this research was to determine whether indirect land use occurs and if so to what extent. Indirect land use is a change from non-cropland to cropland (e.g. deforestation) that may occur in response to increasing scarcity of cropland. As farmers worldwide respond to higher crop prices in order to maintain the global food supply and demand balance, pristine lands are cleared and converted to new cropland to replace the crops for feed and food that were diverted elsewhere to biofuels production.
In the corn ethanol industry, the ability of plants to obtain favorable prices through marketing decisions is considered important for their overall economic performance. Based on a panel of surveyed of ethanol plants we extend data envelopment analysis (DEA) to decompose the economic efficiency of plants into conventional sources (technical and allocative efficiency) and a new component we call marketing efficiency.
This study focuses on the simulation of a complete process for producing butanol via
acetone, butanol, and ethanol corn fermentation.
We assessed the life-cycle energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission impacts of the following three soybean-derived fuels by expanding, updating, and using Argonne National Laboratory’s Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model: (1) biodiesel produced from soy oil transesterification, (2) renewable diesel produced from hydrogenation of soy oil by using two processes (renewable diesel I and II), and (3) renewable gasoline produced from catalytic cracking of soy oil.
We assessed current water consumption during liquid fuel production, evaluating major steps of fuel lifecycle for five fuel pathways: bioethanol from corn, bioethanol from cellulosic feedstocks, gasoline from U.S. conventional crude obtained from onshore wells, gasoline from Saudi Arabian crude, and gasoline from Canadian oil sands.
This report, generally referred to as the Billion-Ton Study or 2005 BTS, is an estimate of “potential” biomass available within the contiguous United States based on assumptions about inventory production capacity, availability, and technology.
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
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.