SDC303: Production, Harvest, Storage, and Delivery of Herbaceous Energy Crops for Fuel and Chemicals
Statement of Issues and Justification
Use of renewable energy resources to meet society's needs reduces the release of fossilized carbon into the atmosphere, provides new markets for agriculture, and reduces the balance-of-payment problem caused by importation of over 50% of the petroleum required by the U.S. economy. The U.S. has not signed the Kyoto Treaty and thus agreed to voluntarily reduce CO2 emission. Since the U.S. economy consumes 20% of the world?s fossil fuel energy, the decision to continue current policies places the U.S. in an unfavorable light in the world community. In August 1999, President Clinton did sign Executive Order 13134 and Memorandum on Promoting Biobased Products and Bioenergy, aimed at tripling U.S. use of biobased products and bioenergy by 2010.Energy prices are dominated by petroleum prices. Since the oil shortages of the 1970s, plans for alternate energy have advanced and retreated with petroleum prices. When petroleum prices rise, interest in alternate energy increases. Americans, because of their infatuation with transportation, particularly automobiles, are very sensitive to political decisions that affect fuel prices. For this reason, the U.S. government has been reluctant to adopt a long-range policy to protect the environment by producing more energy from renewable resources. If such a policy was implemented, for example, if a goal was set to produce 20% of our energy from renewable resources by the year 2020, energy prices would rise until this goal was met. The market will work to meet the goal in the most efficient way possible. One of the goals of this research is to provide estimates of renewable energy feedstock delivered cost based on real data from existing agricultural industries that are similar to an envisioned energy-from-herbaceous-biomass industry.
Even though current energy prices do not suggest that biomass can compete with fossil fuels, the current volatile world political scene suggests that studies must continue to show how biomass resources, defined as processing wastes and energy crops, can be efficiently collected, stored, and delivered to a conversion facility.
Combustion of fossil fuels releases millions of tones of carbon into the atmosphere. This newly added CO2 will remain from decades to thousands of years. There is legitimate concern that the release of this carbon is causing, and will cause, global climate change. When biomass is used for fuel, the carbon cycle is closed; the released CO2 is captured by the plants growing to replace the biomass being burned.
This proposal focuses on herbaceous material resulting from an annual harvest of agricultural fields; thus, it is a longer-term effort. It is expected that several species of perennial grasses will be grown in a production area surrounding a conversion plant. These stands will be managed to provide a range of harvest dates over a 9-month period, May - January, with the winter harvest being grass that has dried standing in the field.
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