Bioenergy and biobased products offer new opportunities for strengthening rural economies, enhancing environmental health, and providing a secure energy future. Realizing these benefits will require the development of many different biobased products and biobased production systems. The biomass feedstocks that will enable such development must be sustainable, widely available across many different regions, and compatible with industry requirements.

Supply Technology. Improving feedstock processing, handling, and storage operations, and more efficient transportation equipment will reduce the cost of using waste, residue, and crop resources. Supply technology improvements are needed to assure that existing biomass resources can be sustainably collected and are suitable for biobased products and bioenergy applications. Creative market structure changes are linked to improvements in supply technology. Supply technology and market infrastructure innovations will transform diverse biomass resources (residues and crops) into easily transportable, uniform, quality consistent, marketable commodities. Such innovations will not only reduce costs but also reduce the uncertainty, variability and risk associated with biomass feedstocks.

Crop Production Technology. Crop production methods that improve soil, water and air quality, sequester carbon and preserve biodiversity are needed for capturing multiple environmental benefits. Protection and enhancement of the environment are basic premises of the biobased products and bioenergy initiative. Adding environmental value to bioenergy and biobased products requires development of appropriate crop production technology for many different soil and climate regimes in the U.S. Field data generated from trials in several different production regions are required for accurate life cycle studies that compare environmental costs and benefits among technologies. The evironmental benefits from nutrient, water and soil management must be documented before they will translate to economic benefits in specific markets.

Crop GeneticsTechnology. Improving energy crops can reduce biomass costs while simulaneously increasing the potential production area and the productivity per acre. Breeding programs are developing high-yielding energy crop varieties in several regions. Current estimates of production costs and crop productivity are extrapolated from small field trials of these varieties at a limited number of locations. The reliability and replicability of these estimates are untested in many regions, and unproven at production scales in almost all areas. The productivities realized when energy crops are first deployed could easily be 25% less than projected due to the limited number of locally adapted plant varieties and the inexperience of growers in many regions. Conversely, with improved and adapted crop varieties and experienced growers in many regions, actual productivities could exceed projections by 25%. These differences will have an enormous effect on where energy crops will be a profitable alternative for farmers, and on the total amount of biomass that could be available. For farmgate prices of $35/dry ton, differences in potential acreage are shown below.

For additional information, contact the Bioenergy Feedstock Development Program, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6422, 865-574-7364 (voice), 865-576-8142 (fax).