IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jagaec/v46y2014i01p57-71_00.html

Feasibility of an Adaptable Biorefinery Platform: Addressing the Delivery Scale Dilemma under Drought Risk

Author

Listed:
  • Farmer, Michael C.
  • Benson, Aaron
  • Liu, Xiaolan
  • Capareda, Sergio
  • Middleton, Marty

Abstract

Conversion of biomass to electricity is often not economically feasible as a result of large transportation costs and low output prices. We build a model of an adaptable biorefinery situated at an agri-processing facility that already has biomass on-site and consider the optimal scale of the plant to achieve a price premium by selling peaking power given uncertain biomass deliveries year over year as a result of climatic variability. We find that, for conservative electricity prices, a plant situated near cotton gins in Texas could operate with positive expected net revenue while converting on average only 38% of available biomass for peak electricity prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Farmer, Michael C. & Benson, Aaron & Liu, Xiaolan & Capareda, Sergio & Middleton, Marty, 2014. "Feasibility of an Adaptable Biorefinery Platform: Addressing the Delivery Scale Dilemma under Drought Risk," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 57-71, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jagaec:v:46:y:2014:i:01:p:57-71_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1074070800000638/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy
    • Q16 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - R&D; Agricultural Technology; Biofuels; Agricultural Extension Services

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jagaec:v:46:y:2014:i:01:p:57-71_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/aae .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.