Biofuels, Land, and Water: A Systems Approach to Sustainability

Abstract

There is a strong societal need to evaluate and understand the sustainability of biofuels, especially because of the significant increases in production mandated by many countries, including the United States. Sustainability will be a strong factor in the regulatory environment and investments in biofuels. Biomass feedstock production is an important contributor to environmental, social, and economic impacts from biofuels. This study presents a systems approach where the agricultural, energy, and environmental sectors are considered as components of a single system, and environmental liabilities are used as recoverable resources for biomass feedstock production. We focus on efficient use of land and water resources. We conducted a spatial analysis evaluating marginal land and degraded water resources to improve feedstock productivity with concomitant environmental restoration for the state of Nebraska. Results indicate that utilizing marginal land resources such as riparian and roadway buffer strips, brownfield sites, and marginal agricultural land could produce enough feedstocks to meet a maximum of 22% of the energy requirements of the state compared to the current supply of 2%. Degraded water resources such as nitrate-contaminated groundwater and wastewater were evaluated as sources of nutrients and water to improve feedstock productivity. Spatial overlap between degraded water and marginal land resources was found to be as high as 96% and could maintain sustainable feedstock production on marginal lands. Other benefits of implementing this strategy include feedstock intensification to decrease biomass transportation costs, restoration of contaminated water resources, and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Safety, health, and environmental assessment of bioethanol production from sugarcane, corn, and corn stover

“…The three types of bioethanol production in this study, that is, ethanol derived from sugarcane, corn, and corn stover, refer to the most representative biomass resources for sucrose-containing materials, starch materials, and lignocellulosic biomass. Therefore, based on the results of this study, a new viewpoint, that is, process hazard assessment, can be implemented into bioethanol production in addition to economic aspects, LCIA, resource availability, and use of land and water discussed by other researchers [14][15][16]. In this context, the specific category of environmental impacts related with nutrients used in biomass cultivation, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, is also important and their input/output balances and cycles among involved carriers such as animal and plant should be carefully considered [44].…”

“…The environmental impact, mainly expressed as greenhouse gases emissions, has also been evaluated for bioethanol production from various feedstock, including corn in the USA [6][7][8][9], sugarcane in Brazil [10,11] and corn stover [12,13]. Additionally, the issues of biomass availability [14] and water and land use [15,16] have also been studied.…”

Developing Woody Crops for the Enhancement of Ecosystem Services under Changing Climates in the North Central United States

“…This can help alleviate climate change both in the near-term by reducing atmospheric carbon and in the long-term by displacing fossil fuels, especially if the biomass is converted to biofuels or bioenergy under a comprehensive strategy to reduce fossil carbon emissions (Pacala and Socolow 2004). Thus, short-rotation woody crops can provide multiple ecosystem services including carbon regulating services and fuel/energy provisioning services to enhance overall sustainability in the process of addressing climate change (Gopalakrishnan et al 2009). …”

Environmental life cycle assessment of rapeseed straight vegetable oil as self-supply agricultural biofuel

“…Many studies are focused on large-scale biofuel production aware of its environmental and social impacts (3)(4)(5)(6).…”