Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Published Online May 7, 2009
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1168885

Reports

Submitted on November 24, 2008
Accepted on April 15, 2009

Greater Transportation Energy and GHG Offsets from Bioelectricity Than Ethanol

J. E. Campbell 1*, D. B. Lobell 2, C. B. Field 3

1 College of Engineering, University of California, Merced, CA 95344, USA.; Sierra Nevada Research Institute, University of California, Merced, CA 95344, USA.
2 Program on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
3 Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
J. E. Campbell , E-mail: ecampbell3{at}ucmerced.edu

The quantity of land available to grow biofuel crops without impacting food prices or greenhouse gas emissions from land conversion is limited. Therefore, bioenergy should maximize land-use efficiency when addressing transportation and climate change goals. Biomass could power either internal combustion or electric vehicles, but the relative land-use efficiency of these two energy pathways is not well quantified. Here, we show that bioelectricity outperforms ethanol across a range of feedstocks, conversion technologies, and vehicle classes. Bioelectricity produces an average 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per unit area cropland than cellulosic ethanol. These results suggest that alternative bioenergy pathways have large differences in how efficiently they use the available land to achieve transportation and climate goals.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Driving on Biomass.
J. Ohlrogge, D. Allen, B. Berguson, D. DellaPenna, Y. Shachar-Hill, and S. Stymne (2009)
Science 324, 1019-1020
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)