Abstract
Biochar is a co-product of the production of advanced biofuels that sequesters carbon when used as a soil amendment. Gardening consumers are a potential market for biochar and their purchase of biochar-amended products could provide biofuel producers with an additional revenue stream. To better understand this opportunity, preferences for the attributes of potting soils amended with biochar were elicited using a best-worst scaling experiment administered in a survey of 880 Tennessee households. The attributes analyzed were whether the biochar was produced in Tennessee, certified as biobased, a coproduct of biofuel production, and produced from food waste, wood waste, agricultural by-product, or a non-food energy crop feedstock. The effects of consumer demographics and attitudes on preferences for the biochar attributes were also estimated. We tested the independence of irrelevant alternative assumption using a structured covariance matrix designed specifically to the survey’s structure. The results suggest that the attributes most likely to influence favorably consumers are production from agricultural by-product or wood waste feedstock. On the other hand, the attributes least likely to entice consumers are biochar produced in Tennessee or produced as a co-product of renewable fuel.
Highlights
The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), introduced by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and expanded by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, commits the United States (U.S.) to increasing use of advanced biofuels for transportation through 2022
We propose a re-parameterization of the Rank ordered logit (ROL) as an alternative-specific rank ordered probit regression (ASROP) subject to rejection of the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) hypothesis
We report the ASROP results estimated with the unrestricted covariance matrix of equation 4. (The correlation values are in Appendix B)
Summary
The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), introduced by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and expanded by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, commits the United States (U.S.) to increasing use of advanced biofuels for transportation through 2022. ‘second generation’ biofuels are produced with feedstock materials such as agricultural crop residues, food waste, and dedicated energy crops like miscanthus (Miscanthus spp.), switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), and woody biomass. These materials do not directly compete with food supply systems. The RFS requires the use of 36 billion gallons of renewable transportation fuel by 2022, with advanced biofuels accounting for 21 billion of those gallons. Advanced biofuel production has been hindered by a number of factors including investment risks, uncertainty in feedstock production and distribution, the availability of low-cost energy substitutes such as natural gas, and limited demand for biofuel co-products [2]
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