Economic Analysis and GHG Implications of Bioenergy Grasses for Electricity Generation

Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (United States) looked into the use of switchgrass and Miscanthus ("bioenergy grasses") as input material in the co-firing in coal-based power plants in Illinois, and examined some economic/environmental aspects. For the economics aspect, conditions were examined under which cropland would be allocated to bioenergy crops, as well as spatial variability associated with the allocation.

For the environmental aspect, they used lifecycle analysis "to examine the potential for bioenergy crops to reduce GHG emissions", accounting for (1) soil carbon sequestered by perennial grasses and (2) carbon emissions displaced by these grasses due to both conversion of land from row crops and co-firing the grasses with coal.

Some findings of their study include the following: (1) "conversion of less than 2% of the cropland to bioenergy crops could produce 5.5% of the electricity generated by coal-fired power plants in Illinois and reduce carbon emissions by 11% over the 15-year period", (2) under the previously mentioned scenario (i.e. 2% conversion of cropland to bioenergy crops), the cost of energy from biomass in Illinois would be more than twice as high as that of coal, (3) in order to "induce the production and use of bioenergy for electricity generation, interventions in the form of mandates, government subsidies, or setting a modest price for GHG emissions under a cap-and-trade policy might be needed.

The full paper is published in the journal, Biomass and Bioenergy (URL above).