The selections made were: switchgrass, miscanthus x giganteus, energycane, sorghum, CRP.

The presentation gives a map of locations for established trials all over the USA, the results of trials, and 204-2006 yields in tones/hectare.  READ MORE

Some of the findings are:

·         Market response is linked to changes in biofuel targets (12 to 15 billion gallons)

·         There is a wider distribution of feedstock sources

·         The producer decisions are sensitive to profitability for 2^nd generation biofuels

·         Changes in farm activities generating the largest reduction in GHG emissions  differ across scenarios

Mr. Haq also states that the “sustainability of agricultural production for biofuels is a complex and nascent field” that must include new ways of research such as experimentation and additional data, scale (understanding the influence of heterogeneity), and fundamental research (understanding determinants of soil fertility).

The presentation also shows maps of areas in USA and gives preliminary estimates of energy crop supply.  READ MORE

The presentation mainly pointed out three focused areas of feedstock platform: feedstock analysis, feedstock development, and feedstock sustainability. It also lists the members of the Biomass Research and Development Board together with their partnership activities.  READ MORE

The goal of this organization is to remove as much as possible the competition among crops, sugarcane, and pasture area,” legitimizing the need to measure direct and indirect land use change integrating economic and GIS methodology.” Models used for these goals are FAPRI, FASOM, and GTAP.

The presentation contains the data of agricultural land use in Brazil from 1970’s all the way to 2006, measured by The Geographic Information System (GIS). It also shows the land competitions matrix between all areas in this country with detailed information about sugarcane, crops and pastures.   READ MORE

Some of the advantages of Forest Biomass mentioned in the presentation:

·         Replaces fossil fuels with a cleaner, renewable alternative

·         Lovers carbon dioxide emissions

·         Supports growth of agricultural, rural, and forestry economies

·         Reduces dependence of foreign oil and gas imports

At the same time, some of the disadvantages are:

·         Climate impacts from extraction, transportation, burning

·         Soil degradation

·         Increased water run-off pollution

·         Decrease in biodiversity by destroying habitat   READ MORE

CI is building global and regional scale maps for potential biofuel cultivation. In other words, CI is looking for areas most suitable for biofeedstock cultivation based on climatic and environmental requirements. The biofeedstock crops of the greatest interest are jatropha, eucalyptus, sugarcane, soy, switchgrass, cassava, oil palm. The presentation gives a detail description of such climatic and environmental requirements, along with tables describing necessary conditions for each of the biofeedstock crops mentioned above.

Some of the interesting points mentioned in this presentation:

·         Very interesting areas on maps indicating optimal, verging, and non suitable locations for potential biofuel cultivation

·         Refinement of climate zones based on soil attribute information

·         The issues of deforestation and conversion to i.e. oil palm plantations   READ MORE

• She presented the Geographic Information System (GIS) that includes computer software and databases of all forms of geographically referenced information
• Four Pillars of Geospatial Technology used today are: Global Positioning Systems (accurate geolocation), Remote Sensing (space, air, and ground sensors), Geographic Exploration System (Google Earth, NASA World Wind, MS Visual Earth), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS Software)
• The big challenge with collecting all the data is the data volume and complexity
• The significance of Geospatial S&T is enormous; Geospatial S&T represents integral to decision making process in planning, policy, and operational missions
• Ms. Bhaduri also mentioned the climate change and infrastructure providing the climate world maps from past and comparing them to today’s situation

This presentation also gives a satellite picture of geographic characteristics of some locations.  READ MORE

·         One of the main goals of the company is to decrease the pollution by using the enzymatic and microbial solutions, but still proving the economic growth. Usage of enzyme and microbes yields higher efficiency and leads to  larger production will less resources, This presentation provides a beautiful graph where the pollution and the use of natural resource curve gains almost a zero slope (becomes horizontal, constant).

·         Another advantage of this company is that the carbon foot print of Novozymes enzyme product would save up to 25 million tones  of CO2-eq

·         Novozymes deals with bioethanol sustainability, and it also promotes the idea of comparative assessment of bioethanol and gasoline. With this idea, the economic, social, energetic consequences need to be analyzed

Some of the challenges associated with sustainable biofuel introduced in this presentation:

·         The benefit of bioethanol is challenged

·         There is a wide range of expertise requirements

·         The need for a regulatory framework

·         There is a lack of scientific data for land use change impacts  READ MORE

·         The success of the supply chain depends on productive, profitable, and good resource stewardship perspectives  

·         Considering sustainability indicators, a variety of issues need to be considered. It is very hard to find a way that will benefit all the pieces of the supply chain at once; therefore, the decisions are put through the filter known as “An Experimental Set of National Indicators”

·         There are three sets of indicators: environmental, economic, and society indicators

Ø  Environmental indicators include: surface water quality, atmospheric ozone status, soil erosion rates

Ø  Economic indicators include: federal dept to GDP ratio, unemployment, labor productivity

Ø  Society indicators include: births to single mothers, education level, crime rate, time and money contributions to charity

Mr. Steiner also pointed out the geographical areas favorable for agricultural production for Sustainable Biofuels, even at the places with an extreme weather.

This presentation includes many maps of areas in USA and all over the world favorable for such attempts.  READ MORE