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Originally published in Science Express on 7 May 2009
Science 22 May 2009:
Vol. 324. no. 5930, pp. 1055 - 1057
DOI: 10.1126/science.1168885
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Reports

Greater Transportation Energy and GHG Offsets from Bioelectricity Than Ethanol

J. E. Campbell,1,2,* D. B. Lobell,3 C. B. Field4

The quantity of land available to grow biofuel crops without affecting food prices or greenhouse gas (GHG) 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 of 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per unit area of cropland than does 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.

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

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

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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
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