Sustainable Biofuel Contributions to Carbon Mitigation and Energy Independence

Forests

Bruce Lippke³  Richard Gustafson³  Richard Venditti¹  Timothy Volk³  Elaine Oneil³  Leonard Johnson²  Maureen Puettmann⁴ 

[1] Department of Forest Biomaterials, College of Natural Resources, North Carolina State University, 2820 Faucette Drive, Raleigh, NC 27695-8005, USA; E-Mail:;Leonard Johnson and Associates, 1205 Kamiaken, Moscow, ID 83843, USA; E-Mail:;Anderson Hall, Room 107, School of Forest Resources, College of Environment, University of Washington, P.O. Box 352100, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; E-Mails:;WoodLife Environmental Consultants, LLC, 8200 NW Chaparral Drive, Corvallis, OR 97330, USA; E-Mail:

关键词: biofuels;    gasification;    fermentation;    sustainability;    carbon mitigation;    energy independence;    LCI;    LCA;   

DOI  :  10.3390/f2040861

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The growing interest in US biofuels has been motivated by two primary national policy goals, (1) to reduce carbon emissions and (2) to achieve energy independence. However, the current low cost of fossil fuels is a key barrier to investments in woody biofuel production capacity. The effectiveness of wood derived biofuels must consider not only the feedstock competition with low cost fossil fuels but also the wide range of wood products uses that displace different fossil intensive products. Alternative uses of wood result in substantially different unit processes and carbon impacts over product life cycles. We developed life cycle data for new bioprocessing and feedstock collection models in order to make life cycle comparisons of effectiveness when biofuels displace gasoline and wood products displace fossil intensive building materials. Wood products and biofuels can be joint products from the same forestland. Substantial differences in effectiveness measures are revealed as well as difficulties in valuing tradeoffs between carbon mitigation and energy independence.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.