Incorporating Bioenergy into Sustainable Landscape Designs

An approach for landscape design that focuses on bioenergy production systems and integrates it into other components of the land, environment and socioeconomic system is described. Landscape design is a spatially explicit collaborative plan for integrating sustainable management of landscapes and supply chains. Landscape design involves multiple scales, fits into existing land and resource allocation systems, and maintains or enhances social, economic and ecosystem services. The design for a particular area is developed with the involvement of key stakeholders including both private and public land owners and those benefitting from or impacted by services provided by resource use. Appropriately applied, landscape design can guide choices toward more sustainable provision of bioenergy and other services. This approach encapsulates monitoring and assessment of a suite of indicators for soil quality, water quality and quantity, greenhouse gases, biodiversity, air quality, and productivity as well as socioeconomic considerations. The landscape design approach requires attention to site selection and environmental effects when making choices about locations, type(s) of feedstock, transport of feedstock to the refinery, refinery processing, and distribution of bioenergy products and services. The approach includes monitoring and reporting of measures of sustainability along the bioenergy supply chain within specific contexts. Examples of the landscape design are presented. Key barriers are that up-front planning is required, coordination is complex and requires much effort, initial costs may be higher, and the process may be stymied by insufficient data and communication across the supply chain. Landscape designs should be coordinated by a planning team in a way that is doable from the perspective of producers along the supply chain. An impetus for coordination is critical, and that incentive may be demand from the private sector. Hence it requires clear communication of environmental and socioeconomic opportunities and concerns to both the participants in production and stakeholders.