The Economics Of Harvesting And Transporting Hardwood Forest Residue For Converstion To Fuel Ethanol

Interest in biomass energy resources from forests, farms and other sources has been rapidly increasing in recent years because of growing concern with reducing carbon dioxide emissions and developing alternatives to increasingly scarce, expensive and insecure oil supplies. The uniqueness of this book is its coverage of biomass energy markets in the US from an economic as well as technical perspective. Existing books typically focus on single markets or technical aspects at the exclusion of economics, and have given greater coverage to biomass energy outside the US. This edited collection has three main parts. Part One provides a historical overview of forest biomass energy use in the US; the major technologies, economics, market prospects, and policies. Part Two presents forest biomass energy assessments, including life cycle and sustainability perspectives, and Part Three includes five sets of regional case studies. After reviewing the history of wood energy use in the US and technology options, the book shows that forests could displace sixteen per cent of domestic transportation fuel use in 2030. Renewable Energy from Forest Resources in the United States includes a Foreword from Chris Flavin, President of the Worldwatch Institute.

This handbook brings together recent advances in the areas of supply chain optimization, supply chain management, and life-cycle cost analysis of bioenergy. These topics are important for the development and long-term sustainability of the bioenergy industry. The increasing interest in bioenergy has been motivated by its potential to become a key future energy source. The opportunities and challenges that this industry has been facing have been the motivation for a number of optimization-related works on bioenergy. Practitioners and academicians agree that the two major barriers of further investments in this industry are biomass supply uncertainty and costs. The goal of this handbook is to present several cutting-edge developments and tools to help the industry overcome these supply chain and economic challenges. Case studies highlighting the problems faced by investors in the US and Europe illustrate the impact of certain tools in making bioenergy an economically viable energy option.

Interest in biofuels began with oil shocks in the 1970’s, but the more rapid development and consumption of biofuel industry in recent years has been primarily driven by mandates, subsidies, climate change concerns, emissions targets and energy security. From 2004 to 2006, fuel ethanol grew by 26% and biodiesel grew by 172%. As biofuel production continues to expand, investments in capacity expansion and research and development have been made. The 2008 food crisis emphasized the need to re-examine biofuel consequences. Biofuels remain an important renewable energy resource to substitute for fossil fuels, particularly in the transportation sector, yet biofuels’ success is still uncertain. The future of biofuels in the energy supply mix relies on mitigating potential and improving the environmental gains. This book brings together leading authorities on biofuel from the World Bank to examine all of the impacts of biofuel (economic, social, environmental) within a unified framework and in a global perspective, making it of interest to academics in agricultural and environmental economics as well as industry and policy-makers.

In the United States, we have come to depend on plentiful and inexpensive energy to support our economy and lifestyles. In recent years, many questions have been raised regarding the sustainability of our current pattern of high consumption of nonrenewable energy and its environmental consequences. Further, because the United States imports about 55 percent of the nation's consumption of crude oil, there are additional concerns about the security of supply. Hence, efforts are being made to find alternatives to our current pathway, including greater energy efficiency and use of energy sources that could lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as nuclear and renewable sources, including solar, wind, geothermal, and biofuels. The United States has a long history with biofuels and the nation is on a course charted to achieve a substantial increase in biofuels. Renewable Fuel Standard evaluates the economic and environmental consequences of increasing biofuels production as a result of Renewable Fuels Standard, as amended by EISA (RFS2). The report describes biofuels produced in 2010 and those projected to be produced and consumed by 2022, reviews model projections and other estimates of the relative impact on the prices of land, and discusses the potential environmental harm and benefits of biofuels production and the barriers to achieving the RFS2 consumption mandate. Policy makers, investors, leaders in the transportation sector, and others with concerns for the environment, economy, and energy security can rely on the recommendations provided in this report.

The Office of Fuels Development (OFD), a component of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Transportation Technologies, manages the federal government's effort to make biomass-based ethanol (bioethanol) and biodiesel a practical and affordable alternative to gasoline. Through the National Biomass Ethanol Program, the OFD is overseeing key research and development (R&D) and industry-government partnerships for the establishment of a cellulosic biomass ethanol industry. Cellulosic biomass resources being investigated include agronomic and forest crop residues, woody crops, perennial grasses, and municipal wastes. Starch-based sources, such as cereal grains (e.g., corn grain), are not included in this program. The objective of the program is to promote the commercialization of enzyme-based technologies to produce cost-competitive bioethanol for use as transportation fuel. The OFD requested that the National Research Council estimate the contribution and evaluate the role of biofuels (biomass-derived ethanol and biodiesel) as transportation fuels in the domestic and international economies, evaluate OFD's biofuels strategy, and recommend changes in this strategy and the R&D goals and portfolio of the OFD in the near-term to midterm time frame (about 20 years). During this period, a number of complex, interacting factors, including advances in the technologies used to produce biofuels at a competitive cost, the elimination of tax incentives, advances in vehicle and engine technologies, growing concerns about solid waste disposal and air pollution, and global measures to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, will affect the position of biofuels in transportation fuel markets.

An economic analysis and optimization of forest biomass processing and transportation at the operational level is presented. Renewable sources of energy have captured the interest of public and private institutions to develop cost-effective supply chains to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The production of energy from forest harvest residues constitutes an opportunity to develop a supply chain for producing heat, electricity and liquid fuels from renewable materials. Special interest has been directed to the production of aviation fuel given the characteristics of the commercial aircraft technology that cannot use other renewable sources such as electricity, nuclear power or wind turbines. In economic terms, the production of energy from forest harvest residues at actual market prices requires efficient cost management and planning in order to compete with traditional fossil fuel supply chains. Efficient cost management requires an understanding of the operational stages in order to propose alternatives to improve the planning process, reduce costs, and increase the chance of success of this emerging supply chain. The main goal of this study is to improve cost-efficiency of an emerging energy supply chain from forest harvest residues. A general objective is the economic optimization of forest biomass processing and transportation at the operational level. We developed a model and frame-work to analyze the economics of forest biomass processing and transportation using mixed integer programming (MIP), simulation, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and forest operation analysis. We developed an economic costing model that accounts for the cost of machinery and truck waiting time. The study is primarily focused on difficult access steep-land regions although it can also be applied to areas with less restricted road access. A stochastic discrete-event simulation model was developed to estimate cost management strategies to improve economics of mobile chipping operations and analyze the effect of uncertainty in this type of operation. The model was successful in predicting productivity of actual forest biomass recovery operations. The model also allowed analyzing the economic effect of truck-machine interactions when using mobile equipment to process the forest residues With stationary processing equipment, the economic effect of truck-machine interactions on closely coupled operations was analyzed through a simulation model. It was demonstrated that truck-machine interactions affect machine utilization rates and, thus, the economics of the operation. Truck-machine interaction must be accounted for when analyzing forest recovery operations to avoid inaccurate cost estimation. Finally a mathematical solution procedure based on mixed integer programming, GIS and simulation was developed to support planning decisions in forest biomass recovery operations, including economic modeling of the effect of waiting times. The solution procedure was incorporated in the decision support system, Residue Evaluation and Network Optimization (RENO) developed in JAVA platform. The decision support system was demonstrated to be an accurate and effective tool to estimate the most cost effective processing machinery and transport configuration given road access, material physical properties, spatial location of the residue piles and accounting for truck-machine interactions. Additionally, an Ant Colony heuristic is included in the model to bring support to the MIP branch and bound solution method by providing an initial solution for objective function. The model is also flexible to user changes to allow the analyst to analyze the sensitivity of the results to main production variables.