In the past, studies on agricultural feedstocks for energy production were motivated by rising fossil fuel prices interpreted by many as caused by resource depletion. However, today's studies are mainly motivated by concerns for climate change and global warming. Currently, most studies concentrate on liquid fuels with little study devoted toward electricity. This study examines crop residues for electricity production in the context of climate change and global warming. We use sector modeling to simulate future market penetration for biopower production from crop residues. Our findings suggest that crop residues cost much more than coal because they have lower heat content and higher production/hauling costs. For crop residues to have any role in electricity generation either the carbon or carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas price must rise to about 15 dollars per ton or the price of coal has to increase to about 43 dollars per ton. We find crop residues with higher heat content and lower production costs such as wheat residues have greater opportunities in biopower production than the residues with lower heat content and higher production costs. In addition, the analysis shows that improvements in crop yield do not have much impact on biopower production. However, the energy recovery efficiency does have significant positive impact but only if the carbon equivalent price rises substantially. The analysis also indicates the desirability of cofiring biomass as opposed to 100% replacement because this reduces hauling costs and increases the efficiency of heat recovery. In terms of policy implications, imposing carbon emission pricing could be an important step in inducing electric power producers to include agricultural biomass in their fuel-mix power generation portfolios and achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Length: Date of creation: 2008 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea08:6417
Contact details of provider: Postal: 555 East Wells Street, Suite 1100, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Phone: (414) 918-3190 Fax: (414) 276-3349 Email: Web page: http://www.aaea.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (AgEcon Search).
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Did you know? You can create a compilation of all publications of a group of people, say alumni of a program, your students or memers of an association.