دورية أكاديمية

Varied farm-level carbon intensities of corn feedstock help reduce corn ethanol greenhouse gas emissions

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: Varied farm-level carbon intensities of corn feedstock help reduce corn ethanol greenhouse gas emissions
المؤلفون: Xinyu Liu, Hoyoung Kwon, Michael Wang
المصدر: Environmental Research Letters, Vol 16, Iss 6, p 064055 (2021)
بيانات النشر: IOP Publishing, 2021.
سنة النشر: 2021
المجموعة: LCC:Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
LCC:Environmental sciences
LCC:Science
LCC:Physics
مصطلحات موضوعية: corn production, cradle-to-farm-gate GHG emissions, public–private sector collaboration, farm-level survey, biofuel, Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering, TD1-1066, Environmental sciences, GE1-350, Science, Physics, QC1-999
الوصف: A reduction in the overall carbon intensity (CI) of a crop-based biofuel can be achieved by cutting down the CI of the biofuel’s feedstock, which in turn correlates significantly to agricultural management practices. Proposals are being made to incentivize low-carbon biofuel feedstocks under U.S. fuel regulatory programs to promote sustainable farming practices by individual farms. For such an incentive scheme to function properly, robust data collection and verification are needed at the farm level. This study presents our collaboration with U.S. private sector companies to collect and verify the corn production data necessary for feedstock-specific CI calculation at the farm level, through a carefully designed questionnaire, to demonstrate the practicality and feasibility of data collection at scale. We surveyed 71 farms that produced 0.2 million metric tons of corn grain in 2018 in a Midwestern U.S. state to obtain information on key parameters affecting corn ethanol feedstock CI, such as grain yields, fertilizer/chemical application rates, and agronomic practices. Feedstock-specific CI was calculated in the unit of grams (g) CO _2 equivalent (CO _2 e) of greenhouse gases per kilogram (kg) of corn produced. Results showed large CI variations—from 119 to 407 g CO _2 e kg ^−1 of corn—due to the farm-level inventory, while the production-weighted average CI for all surveyed farms was 210 g CO _2 e kg ^−1 , comparable to the national average CI of 204 g CO _2 e kg ^−1 . The nitrogen fertilizer type applied and rate were identified as key factors contributing most to CI variations at the farm level. The estimated N _2 O emissions from fertilizer and biomass nitrogen inputs to soil accounted for 51% of the overall farm-level CI and therefore need to be better monitored at farm level with high resolution. We concluded that this feedstock-specific, farm-level CI evaluation has the potential to be used to incentivize low-carbon feedstock for biofuel production.
نوع الوثيقة: article
وصف الملف: electronic resource
اللغة: English
تدمد: 1748-9326
Relation: https://doaj.org/toc/1748-9326
DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac018f
URL الوصول: https://doaj.org/article/6fe7ff4710b94c0081bd3c3399c33613
رقم الأكسشن: edsdoj.6fe7ff4710b94c0081bd3c3399c33613
قاعدة البيانات: Directory of Open Access Journals
الوصف
تدمد:17489326
DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/ac018f