Sustainable Biofuel Project: Emergy Analysis of South Florida Energy Crops
- Intelligentsia International, Inc., LaBelle, FL (United States)
- Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States). Soil and Water Sciences Dept.
This study evaluates the sustainability of various farming systems, namely (1) sugarcane on organic and mineral soils and (2) energycane and sweet sorghum on mineral soils. The primary objective of the study is to compare the relative sustainability matrices of these energy crops and their respective farming systems. These matrices should guide decision and policy makers to determine the overall sustainability of an intended or proposed bioethanol project related to any of these studied crops. Several different methods of energy analysis have been proposed to assess the feasibility or sustainability of projects exploiting natural resources (such as (Life Cycle Analysis, Energy Analysis, Exergy Analysis, Cost Benefit Analysis, Ecological Footprint, etc.). This study primarily focused on the concept of Emergy Analysis, a quantitative analytical technique for determining the values of nonmonied and monied resources, services and commodities in common units of the solar energy it took to make them. With this Emergy Analysis study, the Hendry County Sustainable Biofuels Center intends to provide useful perspective for different stakeholder groups to (1) assess and compare the sustainability levels of above named crops cultivation on mineral soils and organic soils for ethanol production and (2) identify processes within the cultivation that could be targeted for improvements. The results provide as much insight into the assumptions inherent in the investigated approaches as they do into the farming systems in this study.
- Research Organization:
- County of Hendry, FL (United States); Intelligentsia International, Inc., LaBelle, FL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Sustainable Transportation Office. Bioenergy Technologies Office
- Contributing Organization:
- Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- EE0000303
- OSTI ID:
- 1344091
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-HENDRYFLA-00303-506
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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