Realizing the Ecosystem Benefits of Cellulosic Biofuels: Insights from Integrated Economic-Ecosystem Models

Cellulosic biofuels, particularly from high yielding dedicated energy crops, are appealing as a renewable fuel because they have low carbon intensity, potential to be grown productively on marginal land and to provide other ecosystem benefits such as soil carbon sequestration and reduced nitrogen leaching. High-resolution satellite imagery and spatially resolved ecosystem models can quantify the potential for achieving these ecosystem benefits. Realizing these benefits will also depend on economic and policy incentives to produce cellulosic biofuels using energy crops and will vary spatially with crop yield and its riskiness, opportunity cost of land and behavioral preferences of farmers. This talk will present insights from integrated economic-ecosystem modeling on the opportunities and challenges for realizing the promise of cellulosic biofuels from energy crops and areas for further research.