Abstract
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.
Highlights
The U.S Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that global energy consumption will increase 50% by 2050 [1]
This study focuses on bioenergy feedstock production in Michigan, the third most agriculturally diverse state in the U.S, which has high interest in bioenergy feedstocks [29]
The Pareto front was further divided into three clusters showing the closeness of the Pareto-optimal solutions to each individual objective optimum
Summary
The U.S Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that global energy consumption will increase 50% by 2050 [1]. Innovation and production of renewable energy have been growing around the world, with 29% of the global electricity capacity [3] and 3% of transportation fuels [4] accounted for by renewables in 2018. Hydropower, wind, and solar make up the majority of the renewable electricity sector, while biofuels account for all of the renewable transportation fuels [3]. In 2005, the U.S Department of Energy set a series of goals, including the production of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022 [5]. They projected that over 30% of the 2005 U.S
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
