Task 5. Integrated Analysis I: Making Room for Bioenergy

Integrated analysis evaluating the potential to "make room" for bioenergy while gracefully honoring other priorities will be directed toward a variety of topics, some but not all of which build directly on results of Tasks 1 through 4. Topics in this category are listed and briefly discussed below:

Pasture Intensification. Global models for pasture productivity (Task 1) and energy crops (Task 2) will be used to quantitatively evaluate the potential of pasture intensification to make land available for bioenergy production. Broader implications of this approach will be pursued as part of Task 6.
Double Crops. Growing a "double crop" – often a cool season grass – during the winter on land used to grow conventional row crops in the summer is practical in temperate climates, which are responsible for producing most of the world's grain and food crops. Double cropping is practiced to a limited extent now, but could be employed much more widely if there were an economic reward for doing so. Very large amounts of feedstock could potentially be produced as double crops¹ while avoiding competition with food crops, benefitting soil fertility and farm income, and giving rise to interesting opportunities for coproducts and integration into rural landscapes.
Altered Animal Feed Rations. Pasture and cropland together comprise most of the world's managed lands, and most of the world's pasture and cropland are used to feed animals either for grazing or cultivation of crops harvested for animal feeds (Ramankutty and Monfreda, 2008). Thus all phases of the animal product supply chain, including what animals are fed and how this feed is produced, figure very prominently in determining the amount of land required to feed humanity.

An example of changed animal feed rations is use of sugar cane processing residues in animal feedlots, as exemplified by the Vale do Rosario Mill, located in Ribeirão Preto, Sao Paulo, where around 22,000 animals have been fed with sugarcane derived products for about 20 years (Margarido et al., 2011). Based on this experience and recent analysis conducted by the Brazilian Bioethanol Science and Technology Laboratory (CGEE, 2010 and Leal et al., 2010), an integrated system featuring improved pasture and feed from sugar cane processing residues could simultaneously support Brazil's current beef output, produce 300 billion liters of ethanol, and make available 54 million hectares of land currently in pasture for other uses. The fuel production potential of this land, assuming a perhaps modest productivity of 10 Mg/ha, is about 200 billion liters of ethanol. The combined total of 500 billion liters corresponds to over 10 times the output of the current Brazilian ethanol industry, and about 26% of global gasoline utilization.

The recent paper of Dale et al. (2010) further illustrates the very large impact that changed animal feed rations can have on bioenergy availability. These authors explore three technologies for land-efficient animal feed production: use of leaf protein concentrates, pretreated forages, and double crops. A scenario is developed based on these technologies in which current US cropland is used to grow the kinds and amounts of food produced today along with 400 billion liters of ethanol, corresponding to roughly half of current US gasoline usage or about 21% of global gasoline utilization.

Burned lands. Recent estimates put the amount of land burned annually at 330 to 430 million hectares globally (Giglio et al., 2010), of which most is estimated to be grassland and pasture predominantly in Africa, with substantial amounts also in Australia and South America. The bioenergy potential of this land has not been estimated in detail, but at the perhaps modest potential productivity of 10 Mg/ha would be about 51 EJ of primary energy. If this were converted to liquid fuel at projected conversion efficiencies (Laser et al., 2009), it would provide about 90% of current worldwide gasoline consumption.²
Dietary choice and food supply chain efficiency. Dietary change could have either a positive or negative impact on availability of currently managed lands for bioenergy production, and is thus important to consider. From a global perspective, many more people will eat higher on the food chain than will eat lower, and it is possible that this could have a large negative impact on land availability for bioenergy. However, in process-analysis (Davis et al., Penn State University) indicates that
1. the land required to feed a human being appears to depend much more strongly on the kind of meat consumed and how that meat is produced than it is on the absolute amount of meat consumed;
2. the biofuel potential from health-promoting dietary changes is huge.
In addition to dietary choice, the overall efficiency of food supply chains has a substantial impact on the land needed for food production. As illustrated in the figure below, losses occur along the entire supply chain. It is estimated that roughly 20% of the produced food is wasted in Western societies (Clark, 2006), and losses are generally higher than this in developing countries. Post harvest loss estimates vary widely but a range of 40-50% of potential food lost or wasted before and after it reaches the consumer is often quoted (Parfitt, 2010; Lundqvist et al., 2008).

Food Supply Chain Losses.

Evaluating the need for bioenergy in sustainable energy futures. The long-term need for bioenergy will be evaluated.

Three constraints will guide our approach to these and other topics within Task 5:

No negative impacts on food production
No expansion of currently managed/occupied land
No environmental degradation relative to the status quo

¹ Richard, T., R. Baxter, G. Carmago, G. Feyereisen, J. Baker. Organizations represented: Penn State University, USDA Agricultural Research Service.

²300 million ha*10 Mg/ha= 3 billion Mg*17 thousand MJ/Mg = 51x10¹⁸ J; 3 billion Mg*100 gallon gasoline equivalent/Mg = 300 billion gallons gasoline equivalent.

References

CGEE – Report on "Sustainability Production of Sugarcane Ethanol" Final Report, Contract CGEE/CTBE No 096/2010, Brazilian Center of Strategic Studies-CGEE, Brasilia, DF Brazil, July 2010.
Clark, D. 2006. The rough guide to ethical living. Penguin Books. p.15.
Dale, B.E., B.D. Bals, S. Kim, P. Eranki. 2010. Biofuels done right: Land-efficient animal feeds enable large environmental and energy benefits. Environ. Sci. Technol. 44:8385-8389.
Giglio, L., J.T. Randerson, G.R. van der Werf, P.S. Kasibhatla, G.J. Collatz, D.C. Morton, and R.S. DeFries. 2010. Assessing variability and long-term trends in burned area by merging multiple satellite fire products. Biogeosciences 7:1171-1186.
Leal, M.R.L.V. et al. Needed Land for the Production of Sugarcane Ethanol, chapter in Sugarcane Bioethanol: R&D for productivity and sustainability, ISBN 978-85-212-0530-2, Coord: Luís Augusto Barbosa Cortez, Editora Edgard Blucher, 2010, 992p.
Margarido, R.C.C., P.R. Leme, S.L. Silva, A.S.C. Pereira. Níveis de concentrado e sais de cálcio de ácidos graxos para novilhos terminados em confinamento (in Portuguese) Cienc. Rural vol.41 no.2 Santa Maria, Brazil Feb. 2011. See also: www.flavito.com/artigo4.htm and www.scielo.br/img/revistas/cr/v41n2/a25tab01.gif