Renewable biomass energy: Understanding regional scale environmental impacts
If biomass energy is to become a significant component of the US energy sector, millions of acres of farmland must be converted to energy crops. The environmental implications of this change in land use must be quantitatively evaluated. The land use changes will be largely driven by economic considerations. Farmers will grow energy crops when it is profitable to do so. Thus, models which purport to predict environmental changes induced by energy crop production must take into account those economic features which will influence land use change. In this paper, we present an approach for projecting the probable environmental impacts of growing energy crops at the regional scale. The approach takes into account both economic and environmental factors. We demonstrate the approach by analyzing, at a county-level the probable impact of switchgrass production on erosion, evapotranspiration, nitrate in runoff, and phosphorous fertilizer use in multi-county subregions within the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) region. Our results show that the adoption of switchgrass production will have different impacts in each subregion as a result of differences in the initial land use and soil conditions in the subregions. Erosion, evapotranspiration, and nitrate in runoff are projected to decrease in both subregions as switchgrass displaces the current crops. Phosphorous fertilizer applications are likely to increase in one subregion and decrease in the other due to initial differences in the types of conventional crops grown in each subregion. Overall these changes portend an improvement in water quality in the subregions with the increasing adoption of switchgrass.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-84OR21400
- OSTI ID:
- 10178755
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9308106-6; ON: DE94017879
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 1. biomass conference of the Americas: energy, environment, agriculture, and industry,Burlington, VT (United States),30 Aug - 2 Sep 1993; Other Information: PBD: [1993]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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