Biofuel production-driven land-use change in agricultural land can have impacts on ecosystem services. Since there is no planned mandate after the Renewable Fuel Standard, there are questions about what implications will future land-use changes have on water quality and how do water quality changes, resulting from potential bioenergy scenarios, affect changes in people's well-being? To answer these questions, I will estimate the value of the predicted changes in water quality under biofuel policy scenarios in counties inside the Mississippi River Basin. From this study, I found that as the percent of land-use changes increase across each county, water quality decreased. I also found that for every unit increase for the change in water quality index, the percentage of individuals' willingness to pay for a change in water quality would increase. The predicted willingness to pay for a change in water quality for a given household varied from -$72 to $143.

Recent emphasis on producing energy from woody biomass has raised questions about the impact of a vibrant wood-to-energy market on the southern wood supply chain, which consists of forest landowners, forest industry mills, and harvesting contractors. This study utilized two surveys of southern wood supply chain participants and a designed operational study of an energywood harvest to investigate the impact of an expanded wood-to-energy market on each member of the southern wood supply chain. First, a survey of consulting foresters was conducted to examine how harvest tract size, forest ownership, and forest industry structure have changed within the U.S. South and how foresters expect the wood-to-energy market to impact the wood supply chain in the future. Second, this study employed a mail survey of forest landowners, forest industry mills, and wood-to-energy facilities from the thirteen southern states in order to investigate expected competition for resources, wood supply chain profitability, and landowner willingness to sell timber to energy facilities. Third, this study conducted a designed operational study on a southern pine clearcut in the Coastal Plain of North Carolina, with three replications of three harvest prescriptions to measure harvesting productivity and costs when harvesting woody biomass for energy. The three treatments were: a Conventional roundwood only harvest (control), an Integrated harvest in which roundwood was delivered to traditional mills and residuals were chipped for energy, and a Chip harvest in which all stems were chipped for energy use. Results from the two surveys suggest that timber markets are inadequate in many areas of the South as a result of expanded timber supply and reduced forest products industry capacity. Only 12% of responding landowners and foresters had sold wood to an energy facility, indicating that wood-to-energy markets are non-existent in many areas of the South. Nonetheless, 98% of consulting foresters and 90% of landowners reported a willingness to sell timber to an energy facility if the right price were offered. Consulting foresters expected wood-to-energy facilities to provide an additional market for wood, and not displace forest products industry capacity. However, two-thirds of consulting foresters, wood-to-energy facilities, and private landowners expected competition between mills and energy facilities while 95% of fibermills (pulp/paper and composite mills) expected competition. Fibermills were much more concerned about competition for resources and increases in wood costs than any other member of the southern wood supply chain. The operational study documented the challenges facing some harvesting contractors in economically producing energywood. Onboard truck roundwood costs increased from $9.35 green t-1 in the Conventional treatment to $10.98 green t-1 in the Integrated treatment as a result of reduced felling and skidding productivity. Energy chips were produced for $19.19 green t-1 onboard truck in the Integrated treatment and $17.93 green t-1 in the Chip treatment. Energywood harvesting costs were higher in this study than in previous research that employed loggers with less expensive, more fuel efficient equipment. This suggests that high capacity, wet-site capable loggers may not be able to economically harvest and transport energywood without a substantial increase in energywood prices. This study suggests that the southern wood supply chain is in position to benefit from a vibrant wood-to-energy market. Landowners should benefit from an additional market for small-diameter stems. This study shows that high production, wet-site capable loggers should not harvest energywood until prices for this material appreciate considerably. Wet-site loggers have very expensive equipment with high hourly fuel consumption rates and this study documented that energywood production was not sufficiently high to offset the high hourly cost of owning and operating this equipment. Nevertheless, a wood-to-energy market should benefit harvesting contractors in general because unless the forest products industry contracts further, loggers can continue to harvest and deliver roundwood to mills as they do at present and those properly equipped for energywood harvesting at low cost may be able to profit from a new market. The forest products industry has the largest potential downside of any member of the southern wood supply chain. This study documents widespread anticipation of competition between the forest products and wood-to-energy industries. However, to date there has been minimal wide-scale competition between the forest products and wood-to-energy industries. It is possible that the wood-to-energy industry will complement, rather than compete with the forest products industry, and thereby benefit each member of the southern wood supply chain. / Ph. D.

Humans have extensively altered terrestrial surfaces through land-use and land-cover change. This change has resulted in increased food, fiber, fuel, and wood that is provisioned by ecosystems to support the human population. Unfortunately, the change has also altered climate through carbon emissions and changes in the surface energy balance. Consequently, maximizing both the provisioning and climate regulation services provided by terrestrial ecosystems is a grand challenge facing a growing global population living in a changing climate. The planting of pine forests for timber and carbon storage and switchgrass fields for bioenergy are two land-cover types that can potentially be used for climate mitigation. Importantly, both are highly productive systems representing contrasts in albedo (grass are brighter than pines) and vegetation height (pines are taller than the grass) along with unknown differences in carbon and water balance that influence local to global climate. Here I use eddy-covariance data to investigate how a transition from a perennial bioenergy crop (switchgrass) to a planted pine plantation alters the local surface temperature, global carbon dioxide concentrations, and global energy balance. First, I found that switchgrass and pine ecosystems have very similar local surface temperatures, especially during the grass growing season. After the switchgrass is harvested, surface temperature in the pine forest is much lower than switchgrass because no vegetation is present to facilitate the evaporation of water. The surface temperature in a bare-ground system (a recent clear-cut) was also high relative to the pine and pre-harvest switchgrass ecosystems. This illustrates the importance of maintaining vegetation cover to reduce local surface temperature. Second, I found that the 30-year mean change in global energy balance (i.e., radiative forcing) from planting a pine ecosystem rather than a switchgrass field was positive (pine warms climate) when considering changes in albedo and carbon measured using eddy-covariance systems. When including harvested carbon, pine and switchgrass can have similar global radiative forcing if all harvested pine carbon is stored, but harvested switchgrass carbon is burned. However, no scenarios I explored resulted in a strong negative radiative forcing by the pine ecosystem relative to the switchgrass field. These results show that afforestation or reforestation in the eastern United States may not result in any climate benefit over planting a switchgrass field. However, the presence of vegetation in both ecosystem types offers a clear benefit by cooling local surface temperatures. / Doctor of Philosophy / Humans are changing the Earth's climate by using oil and gas as fuel that emits greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. Planting trees to reestablish forests is a natural solution for climate change because forests absorb carbon dioxide from the air, but reforestation also changes the Earth's climate in other ways. For example, forests are generally darker than crops and grasses and absorb more sunlight, which traps energy in the atmosphere that can warm global temperature. These non-carbon effects can potentially offset the climate benefit from absorbed carbon dioxide. An alternative natural climate solution is to replace oil and gas with fuels derived from plants, known as bioenergy. Here I compared the local and global climate influence of a tree plantation (loblolly pine) to a bioenergy crop (switchgrass). I found that the local temperature of pine and switchgrass were similar in the summer when the grass was growing, and both were cooler than bare-ground, which was unable to evaporate and transpire water to the atmosphere. Over 30 years, I found that pine and switchgrass absorb similar amounts of carbon. The pine forest absorbs more carbon than switchgrass when it is fully grown but releases carbon during the first five years of growth. As a switchgrass field is brighter than a pine forest, planting a pine forest instead of a switchgrass field warms the Earth's climate. However, assuming no carbon from the harvested trees is released to the atmosphere, the pine and switchgrass have the same influence on global climate. My findings show that a pine plantation and a bioenergy crop can have similar climate benefits when carbon is stored in forests.

No / Bio-energy availability, its potential and production, challenges, and opportunities in Europe are addressed in this chapter. In addition, a comprehensive comparison of different generations of biofuels, types of bioenergy resource availability for various EU countries, and the prediction of the supply rate has been explained. This book chapter helps us understand the progress of consumable bioenergy resources and expected future trends, which is highly important to know. The basis of this chapter is on the agreements in the European energy institutes and related policies. Furthermore, the potential resources of bio-energy in Europe, environmental impacts, and the challenges and barriers that may be faced in the present and future have been investigated.

Orientador: Emília Wanda Rutkowski / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Civil, Arquitetura e Urbanismo / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-20T07:35:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Pereira_AlessandroSanches_D.pdf: 5165595 bytes, checksum: 73620d8378ad8d181301438136ddfb13 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: A otimização do desempenho das cadeias de ofertas é um processo importante para promover o desenvolvimento sustentável, uma vez que as atividades de produção e seus fluxos de distribuição de produtos estão intimamente ligadas às mudanças ambientais. Neste contexto, o conceito gestão sustentável da cadeia de oferta é entendido como a gestão dos serviços, produtos e matérias-primas ao longo da cadeia com melhorias para os objetivos ambientais e sociais. Este estudo analisa a cadeia de oferta de biomassa florestal com a finalidade de propor uma estratégia de avaliação de desempenho. A Suécia foi usada como área de pesquisa e forneceu informação para a construção da estratégia para a avaliação do conceito de sustentabilidade no desempenho da cadeia de oferta. É importante abordar que este estudo é o resultado da parceria entre Brasil e Suécia representados pela UNICAMP, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, e KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, dentro do Programa de Cooperação Externa Erasmus Mundus entre a União Européia e Brasil / Abstract: The performance optimization of supply chains is an important process to promote sustainable development, since production activities and products distributions flows are closely linked to environmental changes. In this context, the sustainable supply chain management concept is understood as the management of services, products and raw materials along the chain with improvements to the environmental and social goals. This study analyzes the forest-based biomass supply chains with the purpose of proposing a performance assessment strategy. Sweden provided a framework that was used to design a strategy to guide supply chain performance evaluation. It is important to address that this study is the outcome of the partnership between Brazil and Sweden represented by UNICAMP, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, and KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, under the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window EU-Brazil, StartUP Program / Doutorado / Saneamento e Ambiente / Doutor em Engenharia Civil

The fossil hydrocarbons are not inexhaustible, and their use is not without impact in our need of energy, fuels and hydrocarbons as building blocks for organic materials. The quest for renewable, environmentally more friendly technologies are in need and woody biomass is a promising candidate, well provided in the boreal parts of the world. To convert the constituents of wood into valuable gaseous products, suitable for the end use required, we need a reliable gasification technology. But to become an industrial application on full scale there are still a few issues to take into account since the presence of contaminants in the process gas will pose several issues, both technical and operational, for instance by corrosion, fouling and catalyst deactivation. Furthermore the downstream applications may have very stringent needs for syngas cleanliness depending on its use. Therefore, the levels of contaminants must be decreased by gas cleanup to fulfil the requirements of the downstream applications. One of the most prominent problems in biomass gasification is the formation of tars – an organic byproduct in the degradation of larger hydrocarbons. So, tar degrading catalysts are needed in order to avoid tar related operational problems such as fouling but also reduced conversion efficiency. Deactivation of catalysts is generally inevitable, but the process may be slowed or even prevented. Catalysts are often very sensitive to poisonous compounds in the process gas, but also to the harsh conditions in the gasifier, risking problems as coke formation and attrition. Alongside with having to be resistant to any physical and chemical damage, the catalyst also needs to have high selectivity and conversion rate, which would result in a more or less tar-free gas. Commercial tar reforming catalysts of today often contain nickel as the active element, but also often display a moderate to rapid deactivation due to the causes mentioned.

This study uses energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) balances to evaluate how the scale of sugarcane cultivation affects the performance of a sugarcane bioenergy system generating exportable electricity from bagasse. Small-, medium-, large- and miller-planter systems, with cane field areas of less than 10 ha, 10 – 42 ha, 42 – 2000 ha, more than 2000 ha respectively, were modelled. Each of them also has different combinations of manual and mechanical agricultural operations, resulting in different cane yields. Miller-planter system (fully mechanised) performs best with energy yield ratio of 10.99, GHG emissions in bagasse electricity of 0.0633 kg CO2eq/kWh and avoided life cycle GHG emissions of 82.07% when replacing electricity from coal, whereas small-planter system (fully manual) has the worst performance with energy yield ratio of 6.82, GHG emissions in bagasse electricity of 0.0881 kg CO2eq/kWh and avoided life cycle GHG emissions of 75.03% when substituting electricity from coal. Sensitivity analyses show that relative performances of all sugarcane planter systems both in terms of energy and GHG emissions are not significantly affected by variations in bagasse allocation factor, in sugarcane yield and in fertiliser input (the most energy-intensive and GHG-emitting component). Moreover, they confirm miller-planter system as the overall best performer and indicate that increasing small-planters’ cane yield is the critical measure to improve their energy analysis performance. In terms of the nature of agricultural operations, mechanical operations do not necessarily require more input energy than their manual counterparts, contrary to common belief. This is the case for fertilisation, irrigation and cane loading. Fully mechanised sugarcane production at miller-planter scale is therefore strongly encouraged.

Due to the increasing climate change concerns, biofuels have attracted more attention in the energy field as potential alternative energy sources. Particularly, microalgal biofuel has stood out because of its higher fuel yield potential and lower water and land demand than terrestrial biomass. Because of its outstanding photosynthetic efficiency, the microalgal technology is also investigated by researchers around the world as a potential biological solution for carbon capturing in the industrial sector. To explore the prospects of microalgal technology in a local context, this research lays it focus on investigating the potentiality of microalgal biofuel in the cement industry on Gotland, which is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the island. For this purpose, the thesis implements a series of estimations based on the emission data of Cementa AB, Slite, a picture of the potential production of algal biomass and biofuel was created, followed by comparisons to the energy situation on Gotland. While practical data of the selected microalgae species are presented, the results indicate a high potential of microalgae in the production of algal biofuel and the possibility for algal biofuel to power the industrial sector of Gotland, or even the island entirely. Although the estimations are made based on an assumption where all controlling parameters are assumed to be perfectly manipulated, the results still indicate the significance of microalgal technologies in the near-future bioeconomy and global energy system.

The growing need for climate mitigation solutions has contributed so thatbiochar has gained significant interest. Primary for its ability as a carbon sinkbut there is also a growing interest due to several other aspects within industriese.g. substitution effects, increased resource efficiency, an enabler forindustrial symbiosis, and its beneficial properties when put in soil that can increasegrowth. Previous studies of biochar have been dominant within the environmentalperspective of biochar, analyzing detailed characteristics of its propertiesand carbon sink potential. Some studies have a holistic perspective reflectingon countries specific energy mix and the different benefits of producingbiochar. However, previous studies are far too few to determine the value-chainof biochar. Hence previous studies have knowledge gaps within the holistic lifecycle approach from a provider or customer perspective of biochar, not reflectingon demand for quality requirements in different utilization areas and markets.The need for validation of the environmental and the economic performanceof biochar has to be established, and the economic perspective of biochar hasmajor knowledge gaps since previous studies are scarce. The study aims to establish the value-chain of biochar by evaluating theenvironmental, economic, and social perspectives through life cycle thinking.The core of the study is to distinguish value, which first has to reflect thebiochar quality requirements from providers and customers, captured throughinterviews and literature research. The quality requirements enable a goal forproducing biochar and determine what processes and biomass are needed fordifferent markets. This is evaluated through a case development which considersthe different quality requirements. Life cycle assessment (LCA) with acradle-to-grave perspective and life cycle costing (LCC) with a cradle-to-gatewere then used to distinguish biochar´s environmental and economic performance. The interviews and researched literature resulted in three cases being developed,biochar application in electric arc furnaces in steel production, agriculturalapplication, and commercial application through biochar-macadam. Thesteel industry has higher quality requirements due to the need to have a similarcomposition as fossil coal, resulting in biochar produced from wood being theonly option. The limitations for agricultural application are more related tothe allowed amount of phosphorus per ha and thus all the researched biocharapplies to different degrees. Biochar application in biochar-macadam is similarto agricultural application, however limited due to the EBC certification notallowing the production of biochar from sludge. The generated results from the LCA show that the climate performance isvastly different depending on what biomass was utilized and the different markets.Biochar produced from park and garden, and wood results in a higher climateperformance due to the higher carbon sequestration compared to biocharproduced from straw and sludge, however depending on how the biocharis utilized, the performance varies. During biochar application in electric arcfurnaces, the majority of the produced carbon sink is destroyed which resultsin worse climate performance, instead the majority of the reduced emissionscomes from the substituted fossil coal. Compared to biochar application inagricultural and biochar-macadam where the carbon sink stays intact, steel applicationstill has worse climate performance even when including substitution.Biochar-macadam production results in more emissions compared to agriculturalapplication due to the need to mix biochar with stones and compost,thus biochar in agriculture is the best option from a climate perspective. The economic aspects are generated through the conducted LCC which resulted inbiochar produced from park and garden, and sludge being more beneficial dueto the absence of acquisition costs. Production of biochar from wood provesto be difficult when considering a larger time frame, with the market for steelproduction not returning the investment. Biochar produced from straw hasa positive return on investment when considering the agriculture market, butnot for the production of biochar-macadam. The results show that the marketof biochar is very uncertain due to being considered immature and a futuremarket. The major uncertainty is connected with the immaturity of the market.The quality requirements are not reflected in the market pricing which isone of the major reasons for biochar utilization in the steel industry not beingeconomically beneficial. The value chain of biochar is a combination of many different economic,environmental, and social values. The conducted LCA shows that there areclimate benefits due to carbon sequestration, and a possibility to replace fossilreferences. Other than biochar there are also by-products such as heat and oilwhich can be utilized, improving the climate performance further. The multipleproducts also have economic benefits due to the potential of creating multipleproducts. The carbon sink can be sold as carbon credits, and the heat can beutilized in district heating. For providers, the creation of biochar is an enablerto reduce environmental impact, utilize products already within the system,and create value from waste. The structure of biochar generates a lot of valuefor customers. The porosity enables water storing capabilities which increasesthe efficiency of watering. This reduced the amount needed for soil applications,while also securing the harvest from drought and flooding. Even though thevalue chain of biochar shows that there is a lot of potential, it is still uncertainhow it will be integrated into society, and how the market will be shaped in theyears to come.

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