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Bioenergy crops are considered as potential biomass feedstocks to support the bioenergy industry in the southern US. Even though there are suitable areas to grow bioenergy crops, commercial scale production of bioenergy crops has not been established to meet the increasing energy demand. Establishing bioenergy crops in the region requires landowners’ participation and it is crucial to understand whether they intend to promote bioenergy crop production. This study evaluated landowners’ perception of bioenergy and their willingness to supply lands for bioenergy crops in northern Kentucky. A questionnaire survey of randomly selected landowners was administered in four selected counties. Results indicated that landowners’ land use decisions for bioenergy crop production were based on their current land management practices, socio-economic and environmental factors. Overall, there was a low willingness of landowners to participate in bioenergy crop production. Those who were interested indicated that a higher biomass price would be required to promote bioenergy crops on their land. This information could be useful to plan for policies that provide economic incentives to landowners for large-scale production of bioenergy crops in the study area and beyond. Further, results showed how landowners’ opinion on bioenergy affected their preferences for land use decisions. Younger landowners with positive attitude towards bioenergy were more willing to promote bioenergy crops. This information could be useful to develop outreach programs for landowners to encourage them to promote bioenergy crops in the study area.

This study used a spatially-explicit model to identify the amount and spatial distribution of economically feasible sites for establishing dedicated energy crops under various market and policy scenarios. A sensitivity analysis was performed for a biomass market with different discount rates and biomass prices as well as policy scenarios including propriety tax exemption, carbon offset payments, and the inclusion of farmland for biomass production. The model was applied to a four-county study area in Kentucky representing conditions commonly found in the Ohio River Valley. Results showed that both biomass price and discount rate have a can strongly influence the amount of economically efficient sites. Rising the biomass price by 5 $·t −1 and lowering discount rate by 1% from the baseline scenario (40 $·t −1 and 5%) resulted in an over fourteen fold increment. Property tax exemption resulted in a fourfold increase, a carbon payment on only 1 $·t −1 caused a twelve fold increase and extending the landbase from marginal land to farmland only slightly increase the economically efficient sites. These results provide an objective evaluation of market and policy scenarios in terms of their potential to increase land availability for establishing dedicated energy crops and to promote the bioenergy industry.

There are numerous mid-sized cities in the developing world and most of them lack effective urban management and transportation policies. Though city efforts to reduce global warming potential (GWP) emissions may be low in the global context, effective transportation policies in cities will have obvious results. Taking the Kathmandu Valley as a case study, this paper makes an attempt to analyse the implication of different transportation policies for reducing vehicular emissions and energy consumption. This paper estimates and analyses current and future trends of energy demand and environmental emissions, especially CO2 and PM10 from passenger road transportation in the Kathmandu Valley. The study is based on the primary data collected at the busiest and longest inner city road. It uses the long range energy alternatives planning system framework to construct future scenarios up to 2025. It analyses future scenario implications mainly dealing with the introduction of trolley buses, promotion of public transportation, discouraging private vehicles and low occupancy public vehicles, increasing vehicular speed, and other transportation policies. The study estimated that the 637 million passenger-kilometres traveled in the study route during 2004 resulted in 34·8 million kg of CO2 emissions. The travel demand is estimated to multiply by 7·8 with a corresponding twelve-fold increase in CO2 emissions and a ten-fold increase in total suspended particles (TSP) emissions in the study route from 2004 to 2024 under a non-intervention scenario. This scenario analysis suggests that discouraging private vehicles, thereby promoting mass transportation operated by electricity, can reduce CO2 by 43·7% and TSP by 43·8% compared with a scenario of non-intervention. In addition to transportation policies, effective land-use planning and encouragement of nonmotorised transport can have more positive impacts. Since Nepal is the Himalayan Kingdom, having many glaciers and snow-fed rivers, it is in great risk of global warming. Therefore change should begin immediately.