Earth & Environment - Posted by Layne Cameron-Michigan State on Thursday, January 17, 2013 12:59 - 5 Comments 
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Reject fields could produce lots of biofuel
The researchers used a supercomputer to identify and model biomass production that could grow enough feedstock to support a local biorefinery with a capacity of at least 24 million gallons per year. The final tally of 5.5 billion gallons of ethanol represents about 25 percent of Congress’ 2022 cellulosic biofuels target, says Phil Robertson, professor of crop, soil, and microbial sciences at Michigan State University. (Credit: "old tractor" via Shutterstock)
MICHIGAN STATE (US) — Land unfit for food crops can be prime real estate for biofuel plants—and could produce an estimated 5.5 billion gallons of ethanol in the Midwest alone.
Share this article
Email
Republish this article
The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
In the current issue of Nature, a team of researchers shows that these “marginal” lands represent a huge untapped resource to grow mixed species cellulosic biomass.
“Understanding the environmental impact of widespread biofuel production is a major unanswered question both in the US and worldwide,” says Ilya Gelfand, lead author and postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University.
“We estimate that using marginal lands for growing cellulosic biomass crops could provide up to 215 gallons of ethanol per acre with substantial greenhouse gas mitigation.”
The notion of making better use of marginal land has been around for nearly 15 years. However, this is the first study to provide an estimate for the greenhouse gas benefits as well as an assessment of the total potential for these lands to produce significant amounts of biomass, he adds.
Focusing on 10 Midwest states, Great Lakes Bioenergy researchers used 20 years of data from the Kellogg Biological Station LTER Site to characterize the comparative productivity and greenhouse gas impacts of different crops, including corn, poplar, alfalfa, and old field vegetation.
They then used a supercomputer to identify and model biomass production that could grow enough feedstock to support a local biorefinery with a capacity of at least 24 million gallons per year. The final tally of 5.5 billion gallons of ethanol represents about 25 percent of Congress’ 2022 cellulosic biofuels target, says Phil Robertson, co-author and professor of crop, soil, and microbial sciences at Michigan State University.
“The value of marginal land for energy production has been long-speculated and often discounted,” he says. “This study shows that these lands could make a major contribution to transportation energy needs while providing substantial climate and—if managed properly—conservation benefits.”
This also is the first study to show that grasses and other non-woody plants that grow naturally on unmanaged lands are sufficiently productive to make ethanol production worthwhile. Conservative numbers were used in the study, and production efficiency could be increased by carefully selecting the mix of plant species, Robertson adds.
“With conservation in mind, these marginal lands can be made productive for bioenergy production and, in so doing, contribute to avoid the conflict between food and fuel production,” says Cesar Izaurralde, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory soil scientist and adjunct professor at the University of Maryland.
Additional benefits for using marginal lands include:
- New revenue for farmers and other landowners
- No indirect land-use effects, where land in another part of the globe is cleared to replace land lost here to food production
- No carbon debt from land conversion if existing vegetation is used or if new perennial crops are planted directly into existing vegetation
The Department of Energy’s Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, the National Science Foundation, and MSU AgBioResearch funded the researcher. Additional researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland contributed to the study.
Source: Michigan State University
Please wait
5 Comments
Robert Reed
Deane, you come off so convinced of a plot that I almost believe you. But I need more fact checked data to make up my mind. What can you provide?
I look at the photo at the top of the article and I don’t even know where this is, or if this a sample of the study area. The article doesn’t say.
Yes, it does look like a poster child of industrial agriculture desertification in North America.
But I can see how it might be brought back into some kind of production other than bad hay. I think I could do a labor / equipment and materials costing of the effort. If a local refinery was buying cellulosic ethanol feedstock from me at ($???) per ton, you could do some kind of analysis to determine if it was worth it. It seems plausible that the researchers might be right, as well as yourself. I just returned from a portion of rural America that has large swaths of plowed up, logged off land that is just terribly managed and produces no income for anybody and supports no wildlife to speak of, no bees, no birds. Filled with invasive plants. Couldn’t this land be brought back into some kind of positive production, along with native Flora and Fauna component, in a $6 or $7 a gallon ethanol scenario? Seems worth it to me if we are going to survive Global warming and maintain American hegemony. But this is all speculation.
I’m very grateful to the researchers for all their hard work and I do hope that absolute certainty was the desired end goal.
Best wishes to all,
Robt
Here’s the article with the 1% reference: http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/all-biofuels-are-nonsense-says-nobel-winning-photosynthesis-expert-hartmut-michel.html
Here’s one about how biofuels are killing people: http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/biofuels-may-not-be-as-green-as-hoped-nature-20130107-2cbn5.html
Colin Van Leuven
Well my guess is that the shot was some where in Iowa.
As to the payback versus input, I have to agree with Deane, though not quite for the same reasons. I’m sure if it does fly, you can bet our tax dollars will pay for it.
As for “global warming”, I still don’t belive what a computer model designed on systems that are less than forty years old, and filled with input from even less relauible sources that have been around for even shorter periods, says.
Since we only recently found out we have a hole in the ozone, how in the heck are we suposed to know how big or small it can get?
As I haven’t seen a summer as hot as the one I experienced in the early 1960′s, I find it difficult to believe it is getting hotter.
As the water in front of my Lake Michigan home was as low as it is now, back in the 1960′s, I chalk it up to a cyclical pattern and not some manmade thing. Albeit, we’re in a 16 year drought around the Great Lakes.
Am I against striving for less emiisions? Not at all, as I also remember the skies around Detroit being yellow back in those 60′s………..
Colin Van Leuven
LOL…..sorry for the spelling of my earlier post…….I was trying to clean it up, but I had an Irish Setter pup bouncing all over me to go out……he doesn’t like it that the squirrels and rabbits want to steal the bird seed……….
This is totally bogus… True cost accounting of the amount of fossil fuels needed to gather the material and convert it to fuel and then distribute it as fuel is way beyond any amount of energy that the material can provide. Of course if you do your book keeping the way Enron does you make a nice profit before it all goes belly up, which is the real intent of this plan..
This is a racket to generate funding for more research, as well as to generate money for farmer’s who have poisoned their land and depleted their topsoil so thoroughly that the land is no longer productive for growing food. It’s the equivalent of scraping the bottom of our nations once vibrant food producing barrel.
On an ecologic scale this will have huge and harmful long-term negative consequences to diversity of flora and fauna, as well as topsoil production.
Credible studies have shown that typically biomass provides about 1% energy output for the amount of energy input… This study is a scam written for low interest loans of millions if not billions of dollars to produce a refinery that will fail, but make a profit to the swindlers building it.