Looking Forward

Close to a year from now, GLBRC researchers will be wrapping up their first five-year funding cycle and awaiting word from DOE about a second round. They plan to close out the year with a set of promising technologies for further pursuit and recommendations based on which crops have shaken out as biofuel feedstock winners.

So far it’s clear that deep-rooted perennials are great at sequestering carbon, a big benefit for reducing greenhouse gases and therefore combating climate change. And regardless of the particular source of biomass—corn stover, switchgrass, miscanthus or poplar—bioenergy crops will need to be productive if farmers are expected to make an investment in this budding industry. If clean water, erosion control and biodiversity are important to consumers, agricultural landscapes will need to be designed with these values in mind.

A big part of doing biofuels right may simply mean being aware of the trade-offs.

Randy Jackson frequently gets the question “What biofuel crop is best?” And he usually answers, “It depends on where you are in the landscape.” If you want the landscape to improve water quality in your area, for example, you might need perennial biomass crops on the bottomlands.

After four years of collecting data and building models, Jackson is eager to roll the sustainability work up into scenarios, simulations and flexible decision-support tools so that farmers and other rural community members will have the ability to evaluate how their local landscape could be utilized for a combination of food, fiber and fuel.

At some time in the near future, the Center’s findings and results likely will become—and should become—a point of societal discourse involving a wide range of stakeholders, including the general public. “We’re committed to providing reliable, useful, relevant and thorough information to inform that discourse,” says Jackson.

Entering the home stretch of this first phase, all projects are focused on making existing processes faster, cheaper and more sustainable.
“We’ve created this pipeline and developed technology at the core of our mission, and we’ve achieved it in a little more than three years,” says Tim Donohue. “But we’re far from finished.”

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Tags: Bioenergy, biofuels, Brian Fox, Cameron Currie, Dana Wohlbach, David Rothhamer, GBRLC, Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, James Dumesic, Margaret Broeren, Randy Jackson, Ron Raines, Tim Donohue
Posted in Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Fall 2011, Featured, Uncategorized | No Comments »