Planning land use for biogas energy crop production: The potential of cutaway peat production lands

Farmer

et al. 2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Soils have both direct and indirect impacts on available energy, but energy provision, in itself, has direct and indirect impacts on soils. Burning peats provides only approximately 0.02% of global energy supply yet emits approximately 0.7–0.8% of carbon losses from land-use change and forestry (LUCF). Bioenergy crops provide approximately 0.3% of energy supply and occupy approximately 0.2–0.6% of harvested area. Increased bioenergy demand is likely to encourage switching from forests and pastures to rotational energy cropping, resulting in soil carbon loss. However, with protective policies, incorporation of residues from energy provision could sequester approximately 0.4% of LUCF carbon losses. All organic wastes available in 2018 could provide approximately 10% of global energy supply, but at a cost to soils of approximately 5% of LUCF carbon losses; not using manures avoids soil degradation but reduces energy provision to approximately 9%. Wind farms, hydroelectric solar and geothermal schemes provide approximately 3.66% of energy supply and occupy less than approximately 0.3% of harvested area, but if sited on peatlands could result in carbon losses that exceed reductions in fossil fuel emissions. To ensure renewable energy provision does not damage our soils, comprehensive policies and management guidelines are needed that (i) avoid peats, (ii) avoid converting permanent land uses (such as perennial grassland or forestry) to energy cropping, and (iii) return residues remaining from energy conversion processes to the soil. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The role of soils in delivering Nature's Contributions to People’.

Section: Production Of Crops For Energymentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of soils in provision of energy

Farmer

et al. 2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

“…Worldwide, there is a variety of options to cultivate crops dedicated to biogas production on lands where food and feed crops are not grown due to unfavorable natural or economic conditions, such as marginal lands [125,126], semi-arid lands [127], degraded lands [128], surplus grasslands [129] or former cutaway peatlands [130]. Here, energy crop cultivation is often the only way to keep or make the land suitable for agricultural use and simultaneously maintain or improve the ecological status.…”

Section: Cropsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Future Agricultural Biogas Plant in Germany: A Vision

et al. 2019

After nearly two decades of subsidized and energy crop-oriented development, agricultural biogas production in Germany is standing at a crossroads. Fundamental challenges need to be met. In this article we sketch a vision of a future agricultural biogas plant that is an integral part of the circular bioeconomy and works mainly on the base of residues. It is flexible with regard to feedstocks, digester operation, microbial communities and biogas output. It is modular in design and its operation is knowledge-based, information-driven and largely automated. It will be competitive with fossil energies and other renewable energies, profitable for farmers and plant operators and favorable for the national economy. In this paper we discuss the required contribution of research to achieve these aims.

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng.

“…Also, developed a scheme to produce ethanol from grasslands considering biomass availability and price as well as roads and highways location. Laasasenaho et al established a 50 km radius around biomass producer regions to install power plants. Similarly, Vukasinović, considered installing processing plants near high consumption zones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facilities Location for Residual Biomass Production System Using Geographic Information System under Uncertainty

Santibáñez-Aguilar

Flores‐Tlacuahuac

Betancourt-Galvan

et al. 2018

Biomass is a renewable resource that has attractive characteristics for manufacturing many types of products such as biofuels, specialty chemicals, and energy generation. Several studies have addressed diverse important features such as new technologies for biomass treatment, approaches for potential location of refineries, models to evaluate existing relationships between availability and price, among others. However, two important issues need to be considered: potential locations for biomass processing systems facilities considering geographic constraints, as well as uncertainty associated with biomass availability over time. Thus, this paper presents an approach to determine viable facility locations for supply chains based on residual biomass. This work has used a tool based on geographic information systems in order to involve environmental, social and geographic restrictions. Some of considered environmental features are exclusion of protected areas, vegetation type according with human activities, and water bodies location. Also, the approach considers technical constraints given by the terrain slope, wetland zones, distance to transportation infrastructure, distance to power grids and power plants, etc. In addition, social constrains such as distance to urban and rural communities, and historic monuments are included as well. Additionally, climatic aspects such as frequency of drought and hurricanes have been also taken into account. Besides, this work has considered the effect of biomass uncertainty through several scenarios, based on historical data for residual biomass availability, to include variations over time of this factor on biomass processing systems. The proposed geographic information system was tested for a nationwide case study in Mexico to determine viable regions to locate biomass processing systems facilities. The results show that biomass availability variations over time due to uncertainty have a strong effect on viable regions to install facilities in a supply chain based on biomass. Furthermore, the results also illustrate the influence of the type of raw material on the number of potential locations. This method is useful to define potential locations to be taken into account in problems like supply chain design or planning problem because it is possible to decrease considerably the number of options to choose accounting social, environmental, and geographic issues as well as uncertainty associated with biomass availability.