Below is a transcription of the 2023 Billion-Ton Report: An Assessment of U.S. Renewable Carbon Resources Informational Webinar, which was held on April 16, 2024, by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
Sara Leonard, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Hello, everyone. We'll get started here now that it's 1:30 Eastern. Welcome to today's informational webinar on the 2023 Billion-Ton Report: An Assessment of US Renewable Carbon Resources. My name is Sara Leonard with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and I will be supporting today's webinar along with my colleague Erik Ringle, who will provide some webinar housekeeping before we get started.
Erik Ringle, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Thanks, Sara. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to cover just a couple housekeeping items so you know how you can participate in the event today. You'll be in listen-only mode during this webinar. You can select "Audio connection options" to listen through your computer audio or you can dial in through your phone. You may submit questions for our panelists today using the Q&A panel. If you are currently in full screen view, click the question mark icon located on the floating toolbar on the lower right side of your screen. That will open the Q&A panel. If you are in split screen mode that Q&A panel should already be open. It is also located at the lower right side of your screen.
To submit your questions, simply select "All panelists" in the Q&A dropdown menu, type in your question or comments, and press "Enter" on your keyboard. You may send in those questions at any time during the presentation. We will collect these and time permitting address them during a Q&A session at the end of the event today.
Now, if you have technical difficulties or you just need help during today's session, I want to direct your attention to the chat section. The chat section is different from the Q&A panel and appears as a comment bubble in your control panel. Your questions or comment in the chat section only come to me, so please be sure to use that Q&A panel for content questions for our panelists.
Automated closed captioning is available for the event today. To turn it on, select "Show closed captions" at the lower left side of your screen.
We are also recording this webinar. It will be posted on the Bioenergy Technologies Office website in the coming weeks along with these slides. Please see the URL on the screen here.
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Okay. With that, I'll now turn it back over to Sara to introduce today's speakers and continue the event. Thanks, Sara.
Sara Leonard
Thanks, Eric. Let's go to the next slide. Today we will have four speakers provide expertise in elements of the newly released Billion-Ton 2023 Report.
Dr. Mark Elless, Technology Manager for the Bioenergy Technologies Office Renewable Carbon Resources subprogram, will first introduce the assessment and provide a high-level key findings and key differences in reports over time and then challenges the industry and government are facing.
Dr. Valerie Sarisky-Reed is the Director of the Bioenergy Technologies Office, or BETO, who will explain the significance of this new assessment as well as how it relates to larger DOE and White House priorities.
Dr. Matt Langholtz, a Natural Resource Economist from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will take a deeper dive into specific resources and market scenarios explored within the Billion-Ton.
And finally, Maggie Davis, a Research and Development Scientist from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will showcase the Bioenergy Knowledge Discovery Framework, the Billion-Ton's publicly available data portal.
And at the end we will leave a few minutes for audio Q&A. So, as Erik pointed out, if you have any questions throughout today's presentation, please ask them in the Q&A feature located at the bottom right of your screen. Move the next slide.
And our first speaker today is Dr. Mark Elless.
Dr. Mark Elless, BETO
Well, thank you, Sara, for the introduction and thank you all for attending this webinar today. Today I would like to present an overview of the long-awaited results of the 2023 Billion-Ton study, often known as BT23. Next slide.
The 2023 Billion-Ton Report is the fourth in a series of national biomass resource assessments commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, following the 2005, 2011, and 2016 Billion-Ton Reports. Each report builds upon the last and represents an advancement in the understanding of biomass resources in terms of quantity, spatial distribution, and economic accessibility. Each report adds additional feedstock analysis, better modeling, and the latest available input data. New feedstocks in the Billion-Ton 23 include oilseeds, macroalgae, and waste carbon dioxide.
It is important to emphasize that the production capacities reported in the Billion-Ton 23 are not targets or predictions. This report shows the potential of biomass resources available for bioenergy applications under specified economic and sustainability constraints. We did not set out to find a billion tons of biomass, but the billion tons are an outcome of the free market modeling conducted under these constraints. The BT23 is both policy- and end-use-agnostic. However, the results of the BT23 can be used to inform policy and resource assessments for bioenergy applications, such as meeting the volumetric goals of the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge. Next slide.
Notable changes from the BT16, or the 2016 Billion-Ton, are an updated the USDA baseline for conventional food crop demands as well as projected forest product demands, as well as updated to 2022 dollars. We also included the new feedstocks – like I said before, oilseeds, macroalgae, and waste carbon dioxide. But we also included a sensitivity analysis that shows the impact of relaxing sustainability constraints.
And lastly, the key interpretations include using a degree of market maturity rather than time to avoid criticism of predicting the future that we received in the 2016 Billion-Ton; that the results are sustainable production capacity, not the total production capacity, so that the reported volumes are less than the infill qualities; and finally, that model constraints results in more biomass production when one deviates from these sustainability constraints but may harm the environment by doing so. Next slide.
We did not do this report on our own. This robust analysis was coauthored by 54 individual contributors from federal agencies, national labs, universities, and industry stakeholders. In addition, this report was reviewed by dozens of external experts from organizations such as federal agencies, universities, and non-government organization stakeholders. As with previous reports, we are grateful for the external reviews and collaborations. Next slide.
This slide illustrates the overall results of the Billion-Ton 23 – and Matt Langholtz will go through these resource classes in more detail. But we did analyze and compile numbers for five different resource classes. To begin with, the first bar is the currently used resources, which include corn grain and wood waste for heat and power. And that totals 342 million tons, which represents five quads of energy, very similar to the BT16 number.
The second class is the near-term resources that are currently available but not used, such as waste, forestry, and ag residues. They total nearly 350 million tons, effectively doubling our current bio economy.
Following the near-term we then assess future potential as a function of market maturity. The first of these is low market maturity, defined as having energy crops introduced such as switchgrass and miscanthus, but no yield improvements over time and no harvest technology improvements. Under this condition this resource class grows to 1.13 billion tons, thereby tripling the current bioeconomy.
The next resource class is medium market maturity, defined as having a one percent per year yield improvement of the dedicated biomass crops and with harvest technology efficiency improvement from 50 to 90 percent. This brings in an additional 100 million tons, to reach a total of 1.24 billion tons.
Next, we reach the high market maturity, defined as having a three percent per year yield improvement of the dedicated biomass crops with the same harvest technology efficiency as in the medium. This brings in about 240 million more tons, which reaches a total of 1.5 billion tons.
And finally, we reach our final resource class, the emerging feedstocks, that include micro- and macroalgae. Both have larger price tags but an additional 250 million tons can be available for bioenergy at this time, culminating in a grand total of 1.75 billion tons.
I just want to reemphasize now that all these estimates include sustainability constraints that reduce our estimates from the total available. But overall and in conclusion, BT23 shows that the United States does have over a billion tons of biomass that can be used for biofuels and bioproducts. Next slide.
I believe now I will turn it over to our BETO office director, Dr. Valerie Sarisky-Reed.
Dr. Valerie Sarisky-Reed, BETO
Hi, everybody. Thank you for coming today to hear more about the Billion-Ton Report. First slide, please. And thank you, Mark, for giving us insights into the report. It really is an important underlying study necessary for the growing bioeconomy.
As you just heard, the Billion-Ton Report identifies somewhere between 1 billion and 1.5 billion tons of biomass per year that's available for use in energy out into the future. This triples the current U.S. bioeconomy. It can drive new high-quality jobs all across the nation in agriculture, transportation, and in other industries.
As Mark mentioned, sustainability is critical. The Billion-Ton Report focused on sustainability measures, ensuring that the US can sustainably increase biomass supplies while still supporting food production, thriving ecosystems, and beneficial land use out into the future.
In addition, the report and its biomass estimates are constrained by promotion of new carbon sequestration expectations and water regulation. This resource assessment could really be considered to be conservative. In other words, there is more biomass resource potentially available in the U.S. than we're accounting for because of the overlying sustainability constraints.
Of course, it's critical that we consistently monitor, assess, and adapt these management techniques to ensure sustainable supplies and good practices continue all the way out into the future. Use of biomass is critical if we're going to work towards decarbonizing several sectors within our economy. This is important as these are the administration's goals. And I'm going to touch on this briefly in the next slide.
Okay. Biomass, as I said, can be used in several sectors of the economy and really needs to be. For example, in the production of fuels and chemicals there are aspects in which electrification or other technologies simply won't work. One of these is the aviation – in the transportation sector. They're going to need liquid carbon fuels for the foreseeable future, if not forever. These are referred to as the hard-to-electrify modes of transportation.
In the administration's Sustainable Aviation Fuels Grand Challenge, the goal of meeting 100 percent of U.S. aviation fuel needs was set for 2050, and this is projected to be approximately 35 billion gallons of that sustainable aviation fuel per year. The Billion-Ton Report shows that this resource can indeed be met sustainably. Next slide.
We also need to understand the resource and how it can be used to support the production of fuels and products. To support this, DOE has established the Clean Fuels and Products Shot and, as I mentioned, the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge. These are two priority programs directed by the administration, and the Billion-Ton Report helps support the strategies that we've laid out in these initiatives. As discussed earlier, the Clean Fuels and Products Shot focuses on decarbonizing not just fuels but importantly the chemical industry by providing alternative sources of carbon to advance cost-effective technologies.
The shot's goal is to achieve 85 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions as soon as 2035. I already told you about the SAF Grand Challenge target of 35 billion gallons and at least 50 percent or more by 2050. Provided that we continue to grow the biomass potential and maintain environmental sustainability practices, this report shows that the US does have sufficient biomass to meet all of these goals and to meet them with very strong greenhouse gas emission profiles.
One of DOE's partners is USDA. They recently announced a report called The Plan to Enable the Bioeconomy in America: Building a Resilient Biomass Supply. This report focuses on the systems of production of biomass as a raw material and the preprocessing needed to convert these new materials into feedstocks for the use in bioenergy and particularly in bio-based products.
DOE is also very interested in expanding our biomass resources. We are putting our money where our mouth is, and in February of this year we announced a $29 million funding opportunity that's meant to drive the research, development, and demonstration needed for low-carbon-intensity, purpose-grown energy crops across varied agronomic and geographic landscapes. This is an important portion of the Billion-Ton Report. Concept papers were due in March and full applications are due by June 13th. Next slide.
Okay. When it comes to biomass I don't need to tell you that there is a lot of misinformation out there and it's important that we address some of the misinformation that might be assigned to the Billion-Ton Report and what we aim to accomplish.
First and foremost, the report, as I've said, talks about resources that are available with sustainability constraints. This is not the total amount of resource available, and Matt is going to talk more about that in the next portion of this webinar.
I mentioned some pretty lofty goals, and biomass can be produced in order to meet those goals without impacting conventional food and products such as food, feed, and exports. But there are some interesting caveats to that. If we have a free market society, as we do, farmers have the option to use land in ways that best suit them economically. Since energy crops are meant to be grown on marginal lands, it is possible that some of these crops could be grown on marginal agricultural land as producing food. Matt's going to talk a little bit more about what this does in terms of impacting food prices as well as farmers' economic revenue.
The economic revenue we anticipate from being able to meet the Billion-Ton projections, is strong, though, for farmer communities. We're projecting that they could increase their revenue by 25 to 30 percent by using their land not only for traditional uses but also for energy crops.
The study's mature market simulation establishes that energy crops on less than 10 percent of agricultural land and increasing timber production by 15 percent will actually result in no decrease in forest lands.
And lastly, the Billion-Ton biomass estimates are constrained, as I mentioned, by carbon sequestration, water regulation, and other ecosystem services. In other words, we're looking at a broad array of environmental concerns and ensuring that we're not doing any harm.
So, with that, we're on to Matt Langholtz. Thank you.
Dr. Matthew Langholtz, ORNL
Great. Thanks. I'll start with the conclusion. And Mark touched on this but I'll echo this summary here and then I'll walk back through how we got to this conclusion of the report, starting with currently used resources producing about 0.3 billion tons of biomass per year that we currently use for biofuels and biopower, and then exploring near-term and future market scenarios and how we can increase this production in the future. And in the near-term scenario adding wastes, logging residues, and agricultural residues that we currently have available, bringing production capacity to 0.7 billion tons per year. And adding energy crops in the future in the immature market scenarios, bringing production capacity up to 1.1 billion to 1.5 billion tons of biomass per year. And with the emerging scenario up to 1.7 billion tons of biomass per year. So, in this report we identify a production capacity that can approximately double, triple, or more than quadruple our current biomass production for energy and coproducts.
So, as was mentioned, we have much more biomass than this, as we'll see in a few minutes, but this is an assessment of the production capacity within specified environmental sustainability constraints and within the biomass prices shown here. We also have results showing greater production at higher prices, but here in the summary we show reference biomass prices. And these prices include cost of production and harvest but exclude transportation – again, all within specified environmental sustainability constraints.
So, the report includes resources that we currently use, resources that we currently have, and resources that we could have in the future. Different classes of resources, color-coded in the report.
Each class was analyzed by a separate team, in most cases using a combination of biophysical models and economic models, really building on years of research in these areas. Each class of resources warrants its own deep dive presentation of another hour for each class, really, but today I'm just going to scratch the surfaces in most cases, go a little bit deeper in some parts, and give an overview of the report, starting with currently used resources.
We currently use about 340 million tons of biomass per year from waste, wood, and agricultural resources. This was largely wood to power and corn grain to ethanol, combined producing about five percent of total U.S. energy production. So, biomass energy being the largest single source of renewable energy.
So, next, we'll look at how we can build on this current biomass use, starting with the waste resources. About 200 million tons per year of waste resources – waste resources across the country. This is paper, plastic, and different other types of solid waste; fats, oils, and greases, and other types of wet waste. We include waste resources at a wide range of prices. For example, the fats, oils, and greases are most expensive but are most convertible and highest value. So, we include all the wastes at all the prices.
The 217 million tons of waste resources in the mature market scenario, that's not all the waste; it's about half the waste resource after accounting for recycling and current uses. So, by the way, these – I'll show a series of these summary figures for each resource class, and these are available in the report. And also, shades of purple in these maps indicates enough spatial density to support a facility of over 750,000 tons per year within a 50-mile radius. So, kind of high-concentration areas.
Next, the timberland resources - up to about 60 million tons of biomass per year. Timberland resources, everywhere we have operating timberlands. This includes logging residues, small-diameter trees, and other types of forest waste. The logging residues, 19 million tons. It's about half the total after our environmental sustainability constraints. And the small-diameter trees, 35 million tons. That's about a 15 to 20 percent increase in our current annual harvest for conventional timber products, but it's less than one percent of the timberland growing stock. So, a tiny fraction of total timberland resources, combined harvest, less than annual net growth.
Next, the agricultural resources. A wide range depending on the scenario, but about 600 million tons per year in the mature market medium scenario. This is largely agricultural resides like stover in the Corn Belt and energy crops like switchgrass and willow outside the Corn Belt. At a reference price of $70.00 we get about 600 million tons per year of cellulosic biomass. And for the first time in this report we include intermediate oilseed crops like pennycress that cost more but are more convertible and worth more on a per-ton basis.
The agricultural residues, it's not all the residues we have. It's about a third of the total after accounting for our environmental sustainability constraints and current uses. And the 400 million tons or so of energy crops are modeled to be available on about eight percent of cropland, about 11 percent of pastured land, still leaving about 70 million acres of ag land idle and while meeting projected demands for food, feed, fiber, and export.
So, how do we assess the potential production capacity of energy crops? So, some stakeholders are concerned that energy crops will displaced food production, so we explored this risk in the BT23. We can grow energy crops on nonagricultural land with no impact on food production, but a good faith question might ask "What could happen in a free market where farmers have the freedom to respond to a market for biomass?" So, how might farmers decide where to grow energy crops and how could that impact food production?
So, to explore from this perspective we use an economic model that solves in an annual timestep. First, we solve for projected future demands for conventional crops like corn, soy, wheat, cotton, et cetera. And then, we use this model to simulate a market – for example, offering $70.00 a ton for cellulosic biomass. And this model solves for the most profitable allocation of cropland from the farmer's perspective.
So, this is the result of our mature market medium scenario of energy crop production on cropland in a mature market scenario, and you see there's a hole in the middle of our results. And of course, that's where we have the Corn Belt region. This is prime cropland. We didn't exclude this region from our analysis. Rather, we simulate a free market and we find that corn and soy have comparative economic advantage in prime croplands and energy crops in some cases have comparative economic advantage outside prime croplands. So, this is kind of an economic solution that identifies economically marginal lands best suited for energy crops.
Still, a fair question is "What could be the impact of added agricultural pressure of growing these energy crops outside the Corn Belt?" And to explore this we look at a 30-year inflation-adjusted history of, for example, soy prices, dollars per bushel, and we add the modeled future market equilibrium prices of soy under the business-as-usual scenario without demand for more biomass crops. Of course, prices won't be this smooth in the future. This is just a market clearing modeled price under base-modeled assumptions. And then, we add price impacts of the low, medium, and high energy crop production scenarios. And what we find is about a five percent increase in soy commodity crop prices in the business-as-usual scenario. It's certainly less than recent historic price volatility.
Similar approach and result for wheat. About a 25 percent increase in commodity prices over the business-as-usual scenario but still less than recent prices and within recent historic variability.
And similar approach for corn, finding very little deviation in the case of corn prices from the business-as-usual scenario.
And then, if we drill in a little bit, focusing in on the last year of these results in terms of impacts in the business-as-usual scenario, looking at grain production, food price, and market revenues, and we add the low, medium, and high energy crop scenarios, which produce about 300 million, 400 million, and 600 million tons of biomass per year. And these energy crop scenarios are driven by per-acre yield assumptions ranging from no yield improvements to optimistic yield improvements. So, you can think eight, nine, and 11 tons per acre per year for switchgrass, for example, in the future. But this varies by crop and by county, just to give a sense.
But in the mature market low scenario major grain production is down about three percent. Food prices are up about 0.7 percent. That's less than one percent. And farm revenues are up about 25 percent. For comparison, this three percent drop in production is about half the annual variability that we see in corn, soy, and wheat production over the past decade. So, for example, US corn production was down 10 percent in 2022 and then up about 10 percent in 2023, so this is a small change in production.
In the mature market high scenario with optimistic yields there's virtually no change in grain production, no change in food price, and market revenue has increased about 30 percent. And if we can achieve the per-acre yields of the high scenario, then we can also produce the 300 million, or the 400 million, or the 600 million tons per year of energy crops with near-zero impacts on grain production, near-zero impacts on food price, while still achieving big improvements in farm revenues.
So, just to acknowledge this is a difficult topic to cover in a short overview presentation, but our thinking is that we could do everyone a disservice if we avoid this topic, or if we oversimplify it, so in the BT23 we've pulled these impacts out of the appendix and we've put them in the executive summary and they're in the agricultural chapter and discussed in the sustainability chapter.
So, next we'll look at what drives these increases in farm market revenues. Compared to the business-as-usual scenario, farm revenues are up about $20 billion per year in the mature market low, medium, and high scenarios. This is due to a combination of higher commodity crop prices, like we saw, returns from agricultural resides like corn stover, and returns from the energy crops like switchgrass.
And this shows change in net returns for farmers. Farmers across the U.S. have the potential to benefit from improved incomes. In the news this year, as we frequently see, there are concerns about the economic sustainability of farming, and energy crops and biomass markets can improve the economic sustainability and the environmental sustainability of farming in the U.S. and internationally within bounds, of course, we believe, as we've explored here.
Okay. We've used this figure in the past to illustrate that we're reporting biomass production capacity constrained by prices and within our environmental constraints, which is a subset of the total resource. And in this report we try to clarify this quantitatively with some of these figures that we've seen.
So, how to interpret this? In the mature market the medium scenario has an annual production capacity of 1.2 billion tons per year, of which about a third is currently used under current market conditions. So, with increased market pull, say for decarbonization in the future, we can produce more and use more. But we just want to say we don't imply precision at any level in this report; rather, we aim for an accurate assessment overall. And just to acknowledge, there's uncertainty in each of these classes that we explore. For example, the waste resources, 217 million tons per year. That's about half the total. Maybe waste is a low-hanging fruit or maybe the lower-hanging fruit's already been picked. It remains to be seen how much of this could be captured.
Similar for the logging residues: about half the total after our environmental sustainability constraints. Certainly could get more, could get less. But just is within our modeling constraints.
Small-diameter trees, 35 million tons per year. In our modeling, we've constrained harvests not to exceed net timberland growth. And the wildfire – the U.S. Forest Service with the wildfire crisis strategy that came out last year, they have a target of treating 50 million of overstock stands over the next 10 years. And to achieve this they will need to harvest probably at a rate where harvests are greater than net growth.
So, this 35 million tons is what we model as available on an annual sustained basis in perpetuity as $70.00 per ton, but this resource is potentially greater, certainly greater. We just couldn't quantify is on an annual sustained basis at a known price. That's explored more in the report in the forestry chapter.
Agricultural residues. It's about a third of the total after our environmental sustainability constraints. We get feedback that we're overly optimistic. We also get feedback that we're pessimistic. It could be more, could be less. Remains to be seen. Potential innovations like short-stature corn that could come in the future, at this point we don't know if that means there's going to be less corn stover or just a different composition of corn stover or if corn yields could increase. It remains to be seen. If yields increase, of course that contributes to our high-yield, more optimistic energy crop scenario.
And then, the energy crops, maybe we're optimistic in terms of farmer adoption and market penetration, or maybe if we put a value on the ecosystem services like soil organic carbon sequestration and improved water quality, that could be achieved by deploying deep-rotted perennial energy crops. And if we use innovations like integrated landscape management to put these energy crop where they have comparative economic and environmental advantages, maybe this is actually quite achievable. So, again, this remains to be seen.
So, two points that I'm trying to get to. There's uncertainty in each of these and we don't apply precision but we do aim for a realistic estimate overall. And this 1.2 billion tons is not the total; it's rather a subset of the total as illustrated with these figures. This is also not an exhaustive assessment. This report doesn't include storm debris, beetle kill, herbaceous cover crops, production from reclaimed mine lands. This is not intended to be an aggressive assessment, rather an assessment within existing biomass-producing industries. Within this report the addition of select emerging resources like microalgae and macroalgae reported at higher prices, as shown here, potentially costs could decrease in the future with technological innovations. And also, in report – in this report the carbon dioxide, which can be part of the decarbonization strategy. About three billion tons of CO2 from stationary sources, of which about 50 million tons are potentially available or is available from higher-purity sources at lower prices, less than $30.00 per ton of CO2.
Of course, different resources are available at different prices. Of course, more is better and cheaper is generally better. Starting with the supply curve of resources that we have today and adding energy crops in the mature market low, medium, and high mature market scenarios and adding the emerging resources, showing different resources available at different prices, analyses are needed downstream of this report to explore the comparative economic advantages of different resources for different decarbonization pathways.
So, to roll this back up again, we get about 0.3 billion tons of biomass that we use today. We explore future market scenarios where we can grow our current use of biomass for energy and coproducts. Using resources that we have today or we currently have, we can roughly double our current production capacity. And with energy crops in the future we can roughly triple, if not quadruple with emerging resources production capacity that we could have in the future if there's adequate market pull for these resources. And to emphasize, this is not all of our national resources; this is the subset that we identify as annual production capacity within our environmental sustainability constraints at prices shown here.
And if we were to target 35 billion gallons of SAF, this would require about 0.6 billion tons of biomass per year. And one could see this demand being satisfied from different classes in this overall production capacity. This report doesn't say how much biomass should go to SAF; rather, it explores an end-use-agnostic overall production capacity. But certainly, production demands for SAF and other decarbonization goals could be realized with the capacity we have here. With market signals this production capacity can be recomposed as we learn what works best to meet environmental and socioeconomic goals.
So, overall, we have a diverse portfolio of resources across the country with each region poised to contribute to grow the bioeconomy. And the Knowledge Discovery Framework – or KDF – team has done an amazing job of curating these data. And now I'll pass it to my colleague Maggie Davis to show how you can access the data in this report.
Maggie Davis, ORNL
Thank you. Well, there is a lot of information in this presentation and the report, so I'm here to tell you how to access it. We've made it a point to ensure equitable access to the high-quality data that supports breakthroughs for the U.S. bioeconomy that was presented today and is available in the report. Data behind the new Billion-Ton Report as well as data from past reports can be used to drive local, regional, and national decision-making. And it can be used to chart a course for larger investments in support of strategically targeted scientific research.
So, I will take over the screenshare.
And I'll show you the Billion-Ton data portal that's available on the Bioenergy KDF. I believe someone will also be dropping this link into the chat so that you have access to it. And we'll walk you through the various features that are on here.
So, the information is accessible on this data portal where you can find easy-to-use tools such as maps at the county level. These will help you to understand which various feedstocks or resources maybe grow best in different regions.
So, I am displaying a portal currently that is available from the main webpage of the Bioenergy KDF. You would simply access it from this upper tab, upper left tab underneath our logo. You can also access it from this webpage here, which is prominently displayed on the landing page as soon as you get into it.
So, what we have here is an analysis. These match the various chapters in the report. And this way you can explore what resources might be available via different types of feedstocks. So, in a dropdown menu here you can pull up agriculture, forest land, micro- or macroalgae, and waste resources. This controls the customized visualizations that you're seeing below here. And one thing to note is that we have several different scenarios that are included in the report, and we do default to a mature market medium scenario in this case. You can always change the scenario underneath this middle dropdown and access the near-term mature market low, mature market medium, mature market high, emerging resources, as well as currently used for energy resources.
Additionally, we have a new way to visualize the data by BTUs, or British thermal units, which is a unit of embodied energy. So, on the righthand side here you can toggle between dry tons or BTUs, depending on which way you care to visualize the resources.
As mentioned, the purple on this map indicates the capacity of a given county to supply a greater-than-750,000 dry tons per year facility within a 50-mile radius. This map shows available resources under these different analyses classes. So, if you change the analysis class – for example, to forestland – you will see it change as well. I will go back to "all resources" for the rest of the demo and then we'll walk you through some of the other ones.
The bar chart on the right here shows the stacking of potential production by resources and by scenario. The tree map, which is located in the lower left portion, this shows the relative potential production by these different analyses classes. So, agriculture is highlighted in orange, waste in this maroon culture, forestland in green, and currently used for energy is in yellow.
The supply curve on the righthand side is going to show production potential by price in dollars per dry short ton. We have a slider bar here. If you are interested in resources that might be available at higher prices, you can simply slide that over and access all of those various resources. Likewise, if you want to cap it at a lower price, it will switch as well to just show you those resources. As you've seen in all of these visualizations, there are "hover over" options where you can look at all of the resources in a little more detail.
One thing I wanted to mention is that in the upper righthand corner there's three dots. If you have customized any of these visualizations and you want to download them, you just simply click on that and it'll allow you to save it as a PNG to your local.
The other thing I wanted to walk you through is that the portal has a link here in the upper lefthand portal as well to access the BT23 report. And so, if you land on our page first, please jump over and take a look at that BT23 portal for more detail on the report.
And finally, the download of the data is available here under various links. So, we have forestland resources at the top, agriculture, micro- and macroalgae, waste, and we also have CO2. Note that the CO2 resources are not included in this because we are visualizing most of these resources by BTUs, and CO2 wasn't available to use to visualize by BTUs.
The near-term mature market low, mature market medium, mature market high, and emerging scenarios can also all be downloaded just as a lump dataset. So, that will pull all of the analyses classes together and you simply click on that and it will download to your local machine.
So, jumping into forestland resources, you can also filter. If you are interested in fire reduction thinning, for example, or specifically in mixed wood logging residues you have those options on the lefthand side. And that applies to all of the different analyses classes as well.
One thing to note is that after you filter all of that you can easily download the dataset that you're viewing by simply clicking on this CSV file. We do ask that you register with the Bioenergy KDF. It's a simple process: entering your name, your e-mail address, and any other information that you feel comfortable providing to us, such as information about your organization or your use of the data.
So, if you aren't seeing this "Generate downloadable filtered dataset" button here and instead it's replaced with a "Please register," click that button and it will open a new screen for you to register. It's a painless process that allows us to collect some information on who's accessing the data but then also provides a service to you that if we change the data in the future we can send you an e-mail and let you know about it.
That is all I have for now. I think Sara was going to drop the link in the chat, so hopefully that went there. And thank you for your time.
Mark Elless
Okay. We do have a few minutes for questions, so – I've been monitoring the Q&A. So, I'll start with Valerie. "How can we accelerate government cooperation – fed, state – to convert mine land, brownfields, and other federal/state government land inventories to expanded planned biomass conversion from wastelands to energy farmlands? Is the interagency working group focused on converting these federal/state land inventories to productive energy production?"
Valerie Reed
That's a really great question. We do have numerous interagency working groups that bring together DOE, USDA, and others at the federal level to look at what we can do to incentivize work in this space. Some of it's research and development; some of it's demonstration. For example, our funding opportunity, I mentioned, is going to gather data that's going to be critical for states and other decision makers to determine what their policies will be, what their permitting and other regulatory requirements are going to be. That's traditionally the role that we play within DOE and working with our partners across other agencies.
We do support other activities where we'll liaison or build coalitions at the state level helping states recognize the potential of the biomass within their region, within their state, and how it could best be utilized. So, contacting our office, we can help develop those relationships that need to be brought together, whether they're energy providers, feedstock providers, policymakers, and look at what is the combination of activities we need to take in order to move this forward.
And so, we're working with numerous areas across the country right now and are certainly open to talk with others.
Mark Elless
Okay. Thank you, Valerie. Matt, this is a multipronged question, so I'll try to lump in a bit, but can you elaborate on what the small-diameter tree category is? And what are the assumed sources for this category?
Matthew Langholtz
Sure. And Maggie, you can back me up. I believe the small-diameter trees was five inches to 11 inches diameter at breast height. Is that right?
Maggie Davis
Correct.
Matthew Langholtz
It's basically a pulpwood class tree. But we try to get away from calling it pulpwood because that's an end use. So, it's a pulpwood class tree. It's basically added demand for pulpwood class material.
Mark Elless
And what are the sources for this category?
Matthew Langholtz
A combination of thinnings and plantations. Kind of like basically expanding current pulpwood material production like we currently have in the Southeast U.S.
Mark Elless
Okay. "Is the model adjusted for the actual timber removals?” And, “Will the model supply additional data than previous versions such as pulpwood availability?"
Matthew Langholtz
The short answer is yes. I'd like Maggie to expand.
Maggie Davis
Yes, I agree with Matt. We can make that data available. We do have it in our database. We can make a custom scenario if that's of interest. So, reach out to me on the Bioenergy KDF contact and I can work on that for you.
Mark Elless
Okay. "Is there a discussion on lipid production in biomass production?"
Matthew Langholtz
We certainly have lipid-based resources in the report, like the algae and the intermediate oilseed crops. And Maggie, I believe in the database there's an attribute by material class?
Maggie Davis
Yes, we are now tracking all resources on whether they're lipid or not. And we don't have that as part of the normal download. That's kind of a superuser category when people want that. But we do have that and can make it available. It sounds like I'll be getting a few "Contact Me’s” on the Bioenergy KDF. I look forward to that.
Mark Elless
Okay. "Can you clarify why soybean straw does not show up as an available crop residue? It's the second largest crop and has significant straw production."
Matthew Langholtz
The short answer is we don't have residue removal data on it. It's an example of us being conservative. And I did see this question on a different forum, I think. Certainly not opposed to it. It's certainly a potential resource. Of course, it's – on a per-acre basis I think it's less than stover and I think it does decompose more quickly but – than stover, but it's an additional resource not included in the report.
Mark Elless
"Is there a list of sources for the waste carbon dioxide?"
Matthew Langholtz
Yes. That was a collaboration with the National Energy Technologies Lab, with Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, and I'm certain that the sources are in the subset of that chapter.
Mark Elless
"Are food/beverage processing wastes included?"
Matthew Langholtz
I don't know, to be honest. I'm not sure what those are.
Mark Elless
We get this comment a lot, I think even when we did the BT16, but basically – I'm going to rephrase it: "Why do we keep the currently used for energy constant over all the different resource classes?"
Matthew Langholtz
It's just a way to assess how much it could grow in the future. So, the idea is that yellow, currently – the current use would expand to more use in the future. So, it's just a way to quantify how it could expand in the future.
Mark Elless
"What kind of follow-up studies are you envisioning when using the BT23 data? What would you like to see completed with follow-up studies?”
Matthew Langholtz
So, there's so many important different directions and I don't know all of them, but I do know we're talking about some things. Top of mind, certainly, we're exploring important interactions that we need to understand with conventional markets and we want to explore those with USDA. We're in contact with USDA and we want to be in collaboration with them as we quantify impacts on conventional markets. Farmer stakeholder engagement, adoption barriers, payment for ecosystem services – certainly a lot of people thinking about that. I think when we see those supply curves, different resources with different quality attributes at different prices, what's the best use of biomass for different decarbonization pathways and exploring that. Best allocation of this national resource for different decarbonization strategies. I'm sure Maggie has more ideas too. Anything you want to add?
Maggie Davis
No. I think you covered several. It's really an exciting time to have this dataset in hand. And I'm excited to see where we take it as well all of the users of the Bioenergy KDF data portal and how they're using the data. It's really exciting to watch that.
Valerie Reed
And I'll also add that when we talk about those regional and state partnerships, the Billion-Ton is really the beginning. Here is what you have. So, it's leading to sustainability studies at that level in relationship to what the cities or states want to implement in their own sustainability planning. So, these are studies being done by them using the data to help support their position.
Mark Elless
"How often do these assessments come out?"
Valerie Reed
Every five years. And I don't know if we do that on purpose but it has been every five years. And I am looking forward to the next one already. I think I'll still be here. But it's going to include a lot of more important data on the energy crops because we are going to be actually having that data collected in the next five to seven years, so we'll have a really good start on that.
So, look for that to be one area that will tighten up quite a bit as we move forward.
Mark Elless
Well, thank you all. I know we're out of time. I want to thank the panelists for their expertise but also for all the participants that attended today. Maybe I'll turn it back to Erik or Sara for closing?
Sara Leonard
Yes. Next slide, Erik. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Again, we'll be posting the recording of this webinar as well as the PowerPoint slides on BETO's website in the coming weeks. And in the chat, we have all the website links as well as an e-mail address for any future questions or if we didn't get to your question today. So, thank you.
[End of webinar]