This paper is the summation of several analyses to assess the size and benefi ts of a Billion Ton Bioeconomy, a vision to enable a sustainable market for producing and converting a billion tons of US biomass to bio-based energy, fuels, and products by 2030. Two alternative biomass availability scenarios in 2030, defi ned as the (i) Business-as-usual (598 million dry tons) and (ii) Billion Ton (1042 million dry tons), establish a range of possible outcomes for the future bioeconomy. The biomass utilized in the current (2014) (365 million dry tons) economy is estimated to displace approximately 2.4% of fossil energy consumption and avoid 116 million tons of CO 2 -equivalent (CO 2 e) emissions, whereas the Billion Ton bioeconomy of 2030 could displace 9.5% of fossil energy consumption and avoid as much as 446 million tons of CO 2 equivalent emissions annually. Developing the integrated systems, supply chains, and infrastructure to effi ciently grow, harvest, transport, and convert large quantities of biomass in a sustainable way could support the transition to a low-carbon economy. Bio-based activities in the current (2014) economy are estimated to have directly generated more than $48 billion in revenue and 285 000 jobs. Our estimates show that developing biomass resources and addressing current limitations to achieve a Billion Ton bioeconomy could expand direct bioeconomy revenue by a factor of 5 to contribute nearly $259 billion and 1.1 million jobs to the US economy Keywords: bioeconomy; biomass; bioenergy; biofuels; bioproducts
111Modeling and Analysis: An assessment of the potential impacts resulting from a billion ton bioeconomy JN Rogers et al.
Recent expansions in biofuel production have led to concerns about an emerging “new relationship” between energy prices and the prices of agricultural feedstock for biofuel. We provide new econometric evidence on this relationship using common trend‐common cycle decompositions to estimate long‐run and short‐run co‐movement across various energy and agricultural prices. We also test for the presence of regime changes that may alter the relationship between energy and agricultural feedstock prices under certain conditions. We find that co‐movements between energy and agricultural feedstock prices tend to dissipate in the long‐run, which has important implications for biofuel and food policy.
to describe the steps involved in bringing plant-based feedstocks to market for aviation biofuels production. A candidate feedstock is assigned a FSRL level from 1 through 9, indicating an increasing level of maturity towards commercialization. The FSRL level also communicates the state of development of a feedstock concurrent with its readiness for use with a conversion process. There are four components to the FSRL (production, market, policy, and linkage to conversion process), each with one to four tollgate descriptions per readiness level. The FSRL tool was structured to complement the Fuel Readiness Level (FRL) tool in use by the aviation industry as an internationally recognized communication best practice. Similarly, the FSRL can be used to identify gaps in any feedstock supply chain designed for any biofuel or conversion process that provides a market for feedstocks. This integrated feedstock and conversion technology approach can facilitate a coordinated allocation of resources to effectively plan for and develop a viable aviation biofuels industry.
This paper examines the extent to which biofuel production has been driven over time by the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and the extent to which it was driven by non-RFS policies and market forces. While the RFS has played a critical role in providing a secure environment to produce and use more biofuels, at least in the 2000s, it was not the only factor that encouraged the biofuel industry to grow. While the existing literature has successfully identified the key drivers of the growth in biofuels, it basically has failed to properly quantify the impacts and contributions of each of these drivers separately. This paper develops short- and long-run economic analyses, using Partial Equilibrium (PE) and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models, to differentiate the economic impacts of the RFS from other drivers that have helped biofuels to grow. Results show: 1) the bulk of the ethanol production prior to 2012 was driven by what was happening in the national and global markets for energy and agricultural commodities and by the federal and sometimes state incentives for biofuel production; 2) the medium-to long-run price impacts of biofuel production were not large; 3) due to biofuel production, regardless of the drivers, real crop prices have increased between 1.1 and 5.5% in 2004–11 with only one-tenth of the price increases were assigned to the RFS, 4) for 2011–16, the long-run price impacts of biofuels were less than the time period of 2004–11, as in the second period biofuel production increased at much slower rate; 5) biofuel production, regardless of the drivers, has increased the US annual farm incomes by $8.3 billion between 2004–11 with an extra additional annual income of $2.3 billion between 2011–2016; 6) the modeling practices provided in this paper assign 28% of the expansion in farm incomes of the period of 2004–2011 and 100% of the extra additional incomes of the period of 2011–16 to the RFS.
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