Sustainable Production
Sustainable feedstock production includes all of the steps required to produce biomass feedstocks to the point they are ready to be collected or harvested from the field or forest.
These steps include plant breeding and genomics, crop selection, crop development, and ultimately crop production. USDA and the DOE Office of Science are primarily leading Federal research in these areas. DOE's Biomass Program focuses its sustainable feedstock production R&D in three main areas: Resource Assessment, Resource Development, and Sustainability. This work is conducted in conjunction with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and through Regional Biomass Energy Feedstock Partnerships, led by the Sun Grant Initiative Universities. Work focuses on three main areas of R&D: Resource Assessment, Resource Development, and Sustainability.
Resource Assessment
The first step in developing a sustainable supply of biomass feedstock for the growing bioindustry is identifying the resources currently and potentially available for use in energy production, taking into account factors such as environmental impacts, competing uses for feedstocks, cost, and end use application. The joint USDA and DOE Billion Ton Study (PDF 5.6 MB) Download Adobe Reader provides an initial estimate of biomass resources currently and potentially available at the national level. The Biomass Program is now working with Program partners to update the Billion Ton Study to include regional and local levels of analysis. This effort will include an assessment of and coordination with similar work being conducted across the country by state and local groups; the development of regional and local biomass feedstock supply curves; and a ground-truth of the data by state and local organizations. A variety of factors will be considered to ensure that the feedstock potential is sustainable both environmentally and economically. The data collected during the feedstock resource assessment effort will be used in the development of a GIS-based feedstock "atlas" that will add a spatial capability to the resource assessment work.
Resource Development
After a sustainable biomass feedstock resource has been identified, the resource must be developed to its full potential in a manner that is sustainable and consistent with the requirements of the end user (i.e. conversion facility). The Biomass Program's resource development efforts include analysis of past and existing resource development efforts and establishment of new replicated field trials. Analysis of past and existing efforts will be used to determine the most successful crops and locations for field trials, as well as gaps that need to be addressed. They will also be used to develop an experimental design to serve as a protocol for the establishment of replicated field trials of dedicated energy crops. The field trials will be used to collect data on a variety of factors, including the impacts of agricultural residue removal from the field. Data and input for these efforts are partially collected through a series of Regional Feedstock Partnership workshops hosted in each Sun Grant Initiative region across the U.S. The information gathered through the Platform's Resource Development efforts will also be used to provide data for the GIS-based feedstock "atlas" described in the Resource Assessment section.
Sustainability
Sustainability is incorporated into all of the Biomass Program's Feedstock Production efforts. For example, the GIS-based feedstock "atlas" being developed as part of the Platform's Resource Assessment work will include a number of data layers meant to address the sustainability of an available resource, including soil quality data (such as soil carbon levels or soil bulk density), annual climate data (such as average temperature and precipitation), and production input data (such as fertilizer rates and water availability). The dedicated energy crop field trials being conducted as part of the Platform's Resource Development work will provide valuable information on the sustainability of specific energy crops by allowing project performers to collect information such as water requirements of a specific feedstock, invasiveness of a specific feedstock, or a feedstock's ability to fix nitrogen.