Multidimensional Aspects of Sustainable Biofuel Feedstock Production

Bioenergy is becoming increasingly relevant as an alternative to fossil fuels. Various bioenergy feedstocks are suggested as environmentally friendly solutions due to their positive impact on stream health and ability to sequester carbon, but most evaluations for bioenergy feedstocks have not evaluated the implications of bioenergy crop production holistically to date. Through the application of multi-objective optimization on 10 bioenergy feedstock rotations in a Michigan watershed, a Pareto front is searched to identify optimal trade-off solutions for three objective functions representing stream health, environmental emissions/carbon footprint, and economic feasibility. Various multi-criteria decision-making techniques are then applied to the resulting Pareto front to select a set of most-preferred trade-off solutions, which are compared to optimal solutions from each individual objective function. The most-preferred trade-off solutions indicate that a diverse mix of rotations are necessary to optimize all three objectives, whereas the individually optimal solutions do not consider a diverse range of feedstocks, thereby making the proposed multi-objective treatment an important and pragmatic strategy.

Automated summary

Bioenergy is increasingly seen as a viable alternative to fossil fuels, with various bioenergy feedstocks being considered environmentally friendly solutions that can positively impact stream health and carbon sequestration. However, most evaluations of bioenergy feedstocks have not taken a holistic approach to understanding the implications of bioenergy crop production. Using multi-objective optimization, this study in a Michigan watershed identifies optimal trade-off solutions for stream health, environmental emissions/carbon footprint, and economic feasibility. The results suggest that a diverse mix of rotations is necessary to optimize all three objectives, demonstrating the importance of a multi-objective approach in bioenergy crop production evaluation.