The Biofuel Emissions Debate: Comparing GHG emissions of various biofuel technologies and feedstocks

April 27, 2009 · Filed under Biofuels

By Jason Macdonald

The carbon emissions mitigation and sequestration field is riddled with uncertainties, and biofuel emissions are no exception. While the debate over which carbon mitigation techniques are the most effective goes on in both the scientific and political spheres, the present analysis tries to pull together much of the established emissions literature for various biofuels and identify the discrepancies between them. The analysis attempts to determine the sources of these discrepancies and identify potential areas for future research to reduce this uncertainty. Greenhouse gas emissions are considered from a full fuel life cycle perspective.

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Can human activity count as clean energy?

April 26, 2009 · Filed under Biofuels

By Dominic Pietro

Is it possible for the power generated by humans to be count as renewable energy certificates or carbon offsets? As the threat of climate change becomes increasingly severe, more and more novel solutions are being sought out to combat the problem. Bio-based carbon mitigation is an important and growing sector of carbon reduction strategies. So far though, the strategies focus on plant-based carbon sequestration and biofuels. The potential for plant-based carbon mitigation is high, but if we, as a country, or a world, want to seriously tackle global warming as much as possible, perhaps using human-based energy is a feasible option.

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Moldy Vegetables and Discarded Leftovers: The Hidden Carbon in Table Scraps

April 24, 2009 · Filed under Carbon Sequestration

By Paul Davis

Each day the average American sends three pounds of solid waste to the landfill, out of which nearly six ounces is energy rich food scraps. While a small portion of our food scraps are currently recaptured for composting, the EPA estimates that nearly 97 plus percent ends up in landfills where it produces prodigious amounts of CH4 gas – contributing to global warming while wasting a precious form of potentially renewable energy. However, as recognition has grown over landfill wastes as a substantial source of greenhouse gas emissions, researchers and businessman have began to dedicate increased amounts of time and money to developing advanced digester technologies that can effectively capture food waste gas emissions and utilize them to produce green energy.

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Converting Sweets to Biofuels

April 24, 2009 · Filed under General Information

By Craig Cammarata

It is no secret that the United States has a collective sweet tooth. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, “America is drowning in sugar.” We all enjoy occasional, or not so occasional, sweets, but there are opportunity costs associated with our consumption of caloric sweeteners. It is quite possible to use the caloric sweeteners manufactured from sugarcane, sugar beet, and corn for bioethanol production. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the potential of this reallocation by estimating the amount of gasoline that could be offset by converting our use of caloric sweeteners to bioethanol.

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Combining Bio-Based Carbon Capture with Technological Carbon Sequestration

April 24, 2009 · Filed under Carbon Market, General Information, Land use and land management

By Dominic Pietro

Forests have limited use for carbon sequestration. Most of their carbon storage occurs in the wood itself, so a mature forest has a very slow rate of carbon sequestration; most happens while the trees are still growing. Most technological solutions CO2 removal and sequestration are still a long way from being fully developed and are expensive. At least one man has developed a method to turn CO2 into graphite, a highly stable form of carbon. The possibility of combining this new process with afforestation could lead to slow, but cheap and long-term or permanent carbon storage.

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Could sustainable forest management practices provide regular supply of feed stocks for cellulosic ethanol production at commercial scale?

April 24, 2009 · Filed under Agriculture, Biofuels, Land use and land management

By Mukesh Patir

The Renewal Fuels Standards (RFS) of US Energy Independence and Security Act 2007 requires replacing 39 billion gallons of gasoline use by 2022 with renewal fuels and of these 21 billion gallons is expected to come from cellulosic ethanol. The USDA provide loan up to $ 250 million dollars for research into renewal fuels and recently it has awarded loan to Range fuels to build a 100 million gallons cellulosic ethanol plant in Georgia using mostly woods and forest residues. Is it going to be sustainable or would intensive forest management practice be able to supply feedstock for producing ethanol?

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Pipes, Trains, and Trucks: How to move biomass cost effectively

April 24, 2009 · Filed under Biofuels

By Harry Short

Bioenergy plants today are defined by supply chains that use truck-based transport. Such transport has high fuel use per biomass transported as compared to bulk transport modes such as rail or ship. One can easily imagine a future in which a significant percentage of biofuel production is cannibalized to feed the fuel demands of its truck fleet (Hill et al., 2006). This investigative review explores two alternative transport options, rail and pipelines, and attempts to update previous analyses by using higher fuel diesel costs.

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Switchgrass—On Corn Acreage or CRP?

April 22, 2009 · Filed under Agriculture, Biofuels, Carbon Sequestration, Land use and land management

By Kristen Johnson

The Department of Energy (DOE) has set the goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive by 2012, and by 2030, it aims to make biofuels displace 30% of the country’s projected gasoline use. Some of the primary types of feedstocks being considered to meet these goals are crop residues, perennial woody crops, and perennial grasses. Perennial grasses have been a particular focus, with switchgrass receiving the most attention. Switchgrass, a native tall-grass prairie species, is considered most promising because of its high yields, low inputs, and ability to adapt to a variety of conditions. But an important question concerning the sustainability of this feedstock is: where should this perennial grass be grown?

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Potential consequences of draining Brazil’s Pantanal

April 22, 2009 · Filed under Agriculture, Carbon Sequestration, Land use and land management

By Sean Killian

The Pantanal, located in central South America, is the world’s largest continental wetland. Covering an area the size of Florida and home to nearly 2,000 bird and fish species, the Pantanal is one of the most productive ecosystems on the planet. While large parts of the Pantanal have remained pristine, the ecosystem is currently under unprecedented pressure from economic development, alterations of its water courses and conversion to other land uses, including a national push for ethanol production. These pressures not only threaten the biodiversity of the Pantanal, which is itself an enormous carbon sink, they also threaten to trigger the atmospheric release of massive levels of carbon dioxide if drained. This paper evaluates wetlands’ role in the carbon cycle, and attempts to estimate the carbon loss to the atmosphere if the Pantanal were drained.

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The Costa Rican PSA: A Viable Policy

April 22, 2009 · Filed under Agriculture, Kyoto Protocol and IPCC, Land use and land management

By Geoff  Michael

There are a number of approaches for emissions mitigation from land use and land use change (LULUC). In this paper I summarize the current success and costs of the various incentives for LULUC emissions mitigation. As a reference point I compare the success of each policy toward getting net annual emissions from LULUC to zero, down from the current 5.39 Gt of CO2 emissions. At present, without a penalty for CO2 emissions from LULUC for non-annex countries, the only incentive to maintain the most biodiverse mature forests comes from payments for ecosystem services or for carbon sequestration.

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