Funding-Development
of Methodologies for Determining Preferred Landscape Designs for Sustainable
Bioenergy Feedstock Production Systems at a Watershed Scale; July 16, 2010
Agency
Golden
Field Office
Description
Dramatic
expansion of the domestic biofuels industry is needed
to meet the requirements of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007
(EISA) Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2; i.e., 36 billion gallons per year of biofuels from domestically produced feedstocks
by 2022, including 21 billion gallons per year of advanced biofuels
from cellulosic feedstocks). In order to displace 30
percent or more of the country?s
present petroleum consumption, approximately one billion dry tons of
sustainably produced feedstocks would need to be
produced each year. It is anticipated that the feedstock required to achieve
the anticipated rapid expansion of the commercial domestic biofuels
industry will come predominantly from dedicated energy crops. The lack of
verifiable and reliable environmental data at the watershed scale for
high-yielding energy crops and other feedstocks
removed from the landscape to ascertain the sustainability of these production
systems has been identified as a barrier to the development of a large and
significant biofuel and biopower
industry. Furthermore, there exists only limited information and few tools for
implementing and managing sustainable high-yield energy crops across the
landscape. There is little scientific information and no validated methodology
for optimizing sustainable cellulosic biomass production systems beyond the
plot and field scale onto the watershed and larger scale. With the expected
rapid growth of the bio-economy, the escalation of establishment and production
of energy crops across the agricultural, forestry, and
rural landscape will need to be correspondingly rapid and must happen in
parallel with the development of biorefineries.
Special attention is therefore required to understand sustainability issues at
the watershed level and to use this information for developing a model or a set
of tools to help implement large-scale deployment of energy crops that ensure
environmental sustainability, while optimizing system productivity and economic
viability for producers, and provide high quality biomass for a variety of
conversion processes.
Announcement
Number:
DE-FOA-0000314
Closing
Date:
Jul 16, 2010
Link
to Full Announcement
Contact
Information
A
J Cash, 303-275-4701
james.cash@go.doe.gov