This article addresses development of the Illinois ethanol industry through the period 2007-2022, responding to the ethanol production mandates of the Renewable Fuel Standard by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The planning for corn-based and cellulosic ethanol production requires integrated decisions on transportation, plant location, and capacity.
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A system of equations representing corn supply, feed demand, export demand, food, alcohol and industrial (FAI) demand, and corn price is estimated by three-stage least squares. A price dependent reduced form equation is then formed to investigate the effect of ethanol production on the national average corn price. The elasticity of corn price with respect to ethanol production is then obtained. Results suggest that ethanol production has a positive impact on the national corn price and that the demand from FAI has a greater impact on the corn price than other demand categories.
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.
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 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.
The purpose of this study is to analyse the economical and environmental performance of switchgrass and miscanthus production and supply chains in the European Union (EU25), for the years 2004 and 2030. The environmental performance refers to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the primary fossil energy use and to the impact on fresh water reserves, soil erosion and biodiversity. Analyses are carried out for regions in five countries.
The aim of this study is to show the impact of different assumptions and methodological choices on the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) performance of biofuels by providing the results for different key parameters on a consistent basis. These include co-products allocation or system expansion, N2O emissions from crop cultivation, conversion systems and co-product applications and direct land-use change emissions. The results show that the GHG performance of biofuels varies depending on the method applied and the system boundaries selected.
Interest in liquid biofuels production and use has increased worldwide as part of government policies to address the growing scarcity and riskiness of petroleum use, and, at least in theory, to help mitigate adverse global climate change. The existing biofuels markets are dominated by U.S. ethanol production based on cornstarch, Brazilian ethanol production based on sugarcane, and European biodiesel production based on rapeseed oil.
Governments worldwide are promoting the development of biofuels in order to mitigate the climate impact of using fuels. In this article, I discuss the impacts of biofuels on climate change, water use, and land use. I discuss the overall metric by which these impacts have been measured and then present and discuss estimates of the impacts. In spite of the complexities of the environmental and technological systems that affect climate change, land use, and water use, and the difficulties of constructing useful metrics, it is possible to make some qualitative overall assessments.
This paper describes a preliminary analysis of two technological routes (based on hydrolysis and on gasification + Fischer–Tropsch conversion process) of biofuels production from cellulosic materials. In this paper it was considered the integration of the two alternative routes to a conventional distillery of ethanol production based on fermentation of sugarcane juice. Sugarcane bagasse is the biomass considered as input in both second-generation routes.
This study quantifies the impact of increasing ethanol production on wholesale/retail gasoline prices employing pooled regional time-series data from January 1995 to March 2008. We find that the growth in ethanol production kept wholesale gasoline prices $0.14/gallon lower than would otherwise have been the case. The negative impact of ethanol on retail gasoline prices is found to vary considerably across regions. The Midwest region has the biggest impact at $0.28/gallon, while the Rocky Mountain region had the smallest impact at $0.07/gallon.
The present study is a review of published investigations regarding the economy of ethanol production from lignocellulosic material. The objective is to present relations between and tendencies observed in different cost estimates. The influence of plant capacity and overall product yield on the ethanol production cost is investigated, as well as variations in capital costs in the different processes. The underlying technical and economic assumptions show a large variation between the various studies published. The variation in the ethanol production cost is large, from 18 to 151 US¢/l.
The US is currently the world's largest ethanol producer. An increasing percentage is used as transportation fuel, but debates continue on its costs competitiveness and energy balance. In this study, technological development of ethanol production and resulting cost reductions are investigated by using the experience curve approach, scrutinizing costs of dry grind ethanol production over the timeframe 1980–2005. Cost reductions are differentiated between feedstock (corn) production and industrial (ethanol) processing.
A dry-grind ethanol from corn process analysis is performed. After defining a complete model of the process, a pinch technology analysis is carried out to optimise energy and water demands. The so-defined base case is then discussed in terms of production costs and process profitability. A detailed sensitivity analysis on the most important process and financial variables is carried out. The possibility to adopt different alternatives for heat and power generation combined to the process is evaluated.
Production costs of bio-ethanol from sugarcane in Brazil have declined continuously over the last three decades. The aims of this study are to determine underlying reasons behind these cost reductions, and to assess whether the experience curve concept can be used to describe the development of feedstock costs and industrial production costs. The analysis was performed using average national costs data, a number of prices (as a proxy for production costs) and data on annual Brazilian production volumes.