Interactions among bioenergy feedstock choices, landscape dynamics, and land use

Abstract

Landscape implications of bioenergy feedstock choices are significant and depend on land-use practices and their environmental impacts. Although land-use changes and carbon emissions associated with bioenergy feedstock production are dynamic and complicated, lignocellulosic feedstocks may offer opportunities that enhance sustainability when compared to other transportation fuel alternatives. For bioenergy sustainability, major drivers and concerns revolve around energy security, food production, land productivity, soil carbon and erosion, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, air quality, and water quantity and quality. The many implications of bioenergy feedstock choices require several indicators at multiple scales to provide a more complete accounting of effects. Ultimately, the long-term sustainability of bioenergy feedstock resources (as well as food supplies) throughout the world depends on land-use practices and landscape dynamics. Land-management decisions often invoke trade-offs among potential environmental effects and social and economic factors as well as future opportunities for resource use. The hypothesis being addressed in this paper is that sustainability of bioenergy feedstock production can be achieved via appropriately designed crop residue and perennial lignocellulosic systems. We find that decision makers need scientific advancements and adequate data that both provide quantitative and qualitative measures of the effects of bioenergy feedstock choices at different spatial and temporal scales and allow fair comparisons among available options for renewable liquid fuels.

The Influence of Local Governance: Effects on the Sustainability of Bioenergy Innovation

“…Other sources of information are public documents, databases [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73] (ISTAT (National Statistics Institute) agriculture and population statistics http://www.istat.it/en/; GSE-http://www.gse.it/en/Pages/default.aspx), statistics, and quantitative material (e.g., CO 2 emissions studies, forest and land capacity). The study also makes use of the research findings from the TRIBORN project [12], the correspondent author's PhD results [8,13,74] and a large body of literature on bioenergy-related issues [3,[75][76][77][78][79][80][81]. On the one hand, the correspondent author's paper on the Emilia Romagna region [8] made use of qualitative system dynamics to investigate the causal processes of bioenergy development that led to unsustainable outcomes of biogas production in the region.…”

The Eurotiomycete Apinisia graminicola as the causal agent of a leaf spot disease on the energy crop Miscanthus x giganteus in Northern Germany

“…Therefore, cultivating energy crops can be considered as an alternative approach (Somerville et al 2010), especially to fulfill requirements on sustainable agricultural production systems. These would include a high biomass production, low level fertilization, low water consumption, and not being invasive (Dale et al 2011). Adapted to temperate climates, the fast growing C 4 perennial grass Miscanthus x giganteus would fulfill most of these criteria (Lewandowski et al 2000;van der Weijde et al 2013).…”

The evaluation of ash content in grass biomass used for energy production

“…Use of biomass in energy production is a precondition crucial to avoid ecological disasters in future and to compensate increasingly growing shortage of fossil energy resources [3]. Alternative and renewable fuel sources, such as solar, geothermal, wind, and biomass, have the potential of reducing greenhouse gas emissions [4], avoid environmental impacts associated with fossil fuel extraction, such as mountaintop removal, oil spills, and acid deposition, and can increase energy independence [5]. Biomass is very promising, because it can be converted into liquid fuel, burned directly to produce heat, or combusted to generate electricity [6].…”