Sustainable Agriculture and the Production of Biomass for Energy Use

Abstract

Modern bioenergy is seen as a promising option to curb greenhouse gas emissions. There is, however, a potential competition for land and water between bioenergy and food crops. Another question is whether biomass for energy use can be produced in a sustainable manner given the current conventional agricultural production practices. Other than the land and water competition, this question is often neglected in scenarios to meet a significant part of global energy demand with bioenergy. There are sustainable alternatives, for example organic agriculture, to avoid the negative environmental effects of conventional agriculture. Yet, meeting a significant part of global energy demand with biomass grown sustainably may not be possible, as burning significant quantities of organic matter is likely to be incompatible with the principles of such alternatives, which often rely on biomass input for nutrient balance. There may, therefore, be a trade-off between policies and practices to increase bioenergy and those to increase sustainability in agriculture via practices, such as organic farming. This is not a general critique of bioenergy but it points to additional potential dangers of modern bioenergy as a strategy to meet significant parts of world energy demand.

Production and Characterization of Biofuel from Non-Edible Oils: An Alternative Energy Sources to Petrol Diesel

“…It is therefore not surprising that the biodiesel produced from pure soybean is much more expensive than petroleum based diesel. Hence, the recent research and development in the production of biofuel as alternative energy sources that will compete well with the existing energy sources (fossil fuel) is now concentrated on in-edible oil, which is the focus of this present study [26][27][28][29][30][31]. This work involves comparative study of biodiesel production from Jatropah curcas and Ricininus communis.…”

Farm biogas production in organic agriculture: System implications

“…Impact categories include energy balances, land use and land requirements, resource use efficiency, environmental impacts, and global warming potential (e.g. Halberg et al, 2008;Tuomisto and Helenius, 2008;Oleskowicz-Popiel et al, 2009;Michel et al, 2010;Tuomisto et al, 2012;Pugesgaard et al, 2014) -Reviews discussing and summarizing key effects, trade-offs and constraints of organic bioenergy production in general (Petersen, 2008;Muller, 2009;Durusoy et al, 2011).…”

Experimental analysis of the influence of air-flow rate on wheat straw combustion in a fixed bed

“…While future sustainable biomass potentials have been studied in many papers [8][9][10][11], in heating and cooling sector biomass is expected to cover 50% of the total contribution from renewable sources, assuming an increase of about 84 × 10 7 GJ from 2010 to 2020 [12].…”