3-01: The US billion-ton update: biomass supply for a bioenergy and bioproducts industry

The potential to produce significant biomass from the U.S. landbase is large though difficult to quantify. The first Billion Ton Report (2005) gained the attention of industry, academia and government of the potential to replace 30 percent of the current U.S. petroleum consumption with biofuels by 2030. This update refines the initial assessment framework to include economic analyses of large scale collection of crop residues and wastes, as well as the deployment of woody and herbaceous crops across U.S. cropland and cropland pasture. In this presentation we share an overview of the mechanics of the update, including moving from the Agricultural Statistical District (ASD) scale to the county level scale. Economic and engineering models, workshop results, data sources, and key assumptions were used to refine our analysis from a national strategic report to a comprehensive resource assessment with high spatial resolution.  Results and supplementary tools and data are available through the Bioenergy Knowledge Discovery Framework (KDF).