Research paper SRWC bioenergy productivity and economic feasibility on marginal lands Solomon B. Ghezehei * , Shawn D. Shifflett, Dennis W. Hazel, Elizabeth Guthrie Nichols Department of Forest and Environmental Resources, NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA article info Article history: Received 25 November 2014 Received in revised form 12 May 2015 Accepted 20 May 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: Abandoned lands Contaminated lands Investment analysis Short-rotation forestry Sustainable feedstock production abstract Evolving bioenergy markets necessitate consideration of marginal lands for woody biomass production worldwide particularly the southeastern U.S., a prominent wood pellet exporter to Europe. Growing short rotation woody crops (SRWCs) on marginal lands minimizes concerns about using croplands for bioenergy production and reinforces sustainability of wood supply to existing and growing global biomass markets. We estimated mean annual aboveground green biomass increments (MAIs) and assessed economic feasibility of various operationally established (0.5 hae109 ha) SRWC stands on lands used to mitigate environmental liabilities of municipal wastewater, livestock wastewater and sludge, and subsurface contamination by petroleum and pesticides. MAIs (Mg ha À1 yr À1 ) had no consistent rela- tionship with stand density or age. Non-irrigated Populus, Plantanus occidentalis L. and Pinus taeda L. stands produced 2.4e12.4 Mg ha À1 yr À1 . Older, irrigated Taxodium distchum L., Fraxinus pennsylvanica L., and coppiced P. occidentalis stands had higher MAIs (10.6e21.3 Mg ha À1 yr À1 ) than irrigated Liquidambar styraciflua L. and non-coppiced, irrigated P. occidentalis (8e18 Mg ha À1 yr À1 ). Natural hardwood MAIs at 20e60 years were less than hardwood and P. taeda productivities at 5e20 years. Unlike weed control, irrigation and coppicing improved managed hardwood productivity. Rotation length affected economic outcomes although the returns were poor due to high establishment and maintenance costs, low pro- ductivities and low current stumpage values, which are expected to quickly change with development of robust global markets. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the U. S., the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act sets a target of 136 billion liters (36 billion gallons) of renewable fuels for road transportation by 2022 (U.S. Congress, 2007; Al-Riffai et al., 2010). The National Defense Authorization Act of 2010 mandates that each Federal agency produces or consumes 25% of total energy from renewable energy sources beginning in 2025. In Europe, renewable energy directive 2009/28/EC dictates that by 2020, 20% of total energy and 10% of transport fuel consumptions of EU members should be from renewable energy sources (Scarlat et al., 2013). These mandates have re-invigorated national interest in renewable energy feedstocks and already shifted cropland use for bioenergy feedstocks, thus inflating commodity prices for food crops and livestock (Swinton et al., 2011). The U.S. needs 16 to 21 million ha of non-contentious land in order to meet the above target for cellulosic ethanol by 2022, (Lewis and Kelly, 2014) and Europe requires 17 to 30 million ha of land to achieve the 10% bioenergy target by 2020 (Scarlat et al., 2013). To avoid using croplands for energy production and damaging forests and wetlands due to fast growing wood pellet production (Guo et al., 2015), worldwide efforts are underway to evaluate the use of marginal lands for bioenergy production (Gopalakrishnan et al., 2011; Fritz et al., 2012; Zumkehr and Campbell, 2013; Kang et al., 2013; Kells and Swinton, 2014; Lewis and Kelly, 2014; Stoof et al., 2014). The definition of marginal land varies (Kang et al., 2013) and has been used subjectively (Richards et al., 2014) but broadly describes lands not under cultivation due to low agro- economic values for major agricultural crops (Gopalakrishnan et al., 2011). The use of marginal lands for bioenergy production is appealing partly due to significant availability of marginal lands (Liu et al., 2011). Globally, the size of marginal lands available for bioenergy production could be 100 million to 1 billion ha (Milbrant and Overend, 2009; Zhuang et al., 2011; Kang et al., 2013). For most * Corresponding author. NC State University, Campus Box 8008, Raleigh, NC 27695-8008 USA. E-mail address: sbghezeh@ncsu.edu (S.B. Ghezehei). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.05.025 0301-4797/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Environmental Management 160 (2015) 57e66