Mapping woody-biomass supply costs using forest inventory and competing industry data Timon H. Stasko a, *, Robert J. Conrado a , Andreas Wankerl b , Rodrigo Labatut a , Ryan Tasseff a , John T. Mannion a , H. Oliver Gao a , Stephen D. Sanborn c , Gregory Knott c a College of Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA b Innovation Interface, 126 Reach Run, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA c General Electric Global Research, 1 Research Circle, Niskayuna, NY 12309, USA article info Article history: Received 8 October 2009 Received in revised form 20 May 2010 Accepted 5 August 2010 Available online 22 September 2010 Keywords: Forest biomass Woody crop Facility location Linear programming Feedstock availability Gate cost abstract The goals of energy independence and sustainability have motivated many countries to consider biomass-based energy sources. The United States has substantial and increasing forest resources that could be used to produce both electricity and liquid fuel. However, these forest resources are highly heterogeneous in terms of the wood’s properties, the logging cost, the spatial distribution, and the value to other industries. These factors make predicting costs and selecting plant locations particularly challenging. When dealing with forest biomass, feedstock cost and location have frequently been highly simplified in previous studies. This paper presents a methodology for combining highly resolved forest inventory and price data with records of competing industries to develop detailed maps of feedstock availability. The feedstock sourcing strategy of the proposed bioenergy plants is modeled by a cost-minimizing linear program, as is the feedstock selection of the competing mills. A case study is performed on the southeast United States. ª 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Sustainability, energy security, and other concerns have driven countries around the world to consider biomass-to- liquid-fuel and biomass-to-electricity technologies. In the U.S., the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires the U.S. production of 36 billion gallons (136 billion liters) per year of biofuels by 2022 [1]. The U.S. Department of Defense is looking to supply selected units with a 50e50 blend of conventional and FischereTropsch fuel [2], while the U.S. Department of Energy is funding the development of cellu- losic ethanol plants [3]. Both technologies can use forest biomass as a feedstock. Forest biomass has drawn consider- able interest in light of recent studies on the potential negative impacts of agricultural-based biofuel production from emis- sions [4e6], water [7,8], and land use [6] perspectives. The U.S. has particularly abundant forest resources, covering one third of its territory [9]. Also, it has been increasing for several decades, with net growth exceeding removals by 33% in 2001 [10]. The process of selecting forest feedstock for its use in bioenergy plants and determining the optimal locations of these plants is made particularly challenging by the highly heterogeneous nature of forest biomass. Forest biomass includes a wide variety of wood products, originating from select tree species and tree parts, with different values to timber and pulp industries. Competition from such incum- bent industries for forest biomass is localized and influences * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 607 725 1796; fax: þ1 607 255 9004. E-mail address: ths9@cornell.edu (T.H. Stasko). Available at www.sciencedirect.com http://www.elsevier.com/locate/biombioe biomass and bioenergy 35 (2011) 263 e271 0961-9534/$ e see front matter ª 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.biombioe.2010.08.044