TY - JOUR
T1 - Sustainable land use and viability of biojet fuels
AU - Uludere Aragon, Nazli Z.
AU - Parker, Nathan C.
AU - VanLoocke, Andy
AU - Bagley, Justin
AU - Wang, Meng
AU - Georgescu, Matei
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was funded by the National Science Foundation grant EAR-1204774 through the Water Sustainability and Climate initiative. N.U.A. was supported by this grant during her doctoral studies at Arizona State University and later by a gift to the Environmental Defense Fund from the Bezos Earth Fund for her postdoctoral fellowship.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2023/2
Y1 - 2023/2
N2 - Decarbonizing aviation requires, among other strategies, use of low-carbon liquid fuels, since electrified propulsion of large aircraft is not yet viable. However, commercialization of such ‘sustainable aviation fuels’ is lagging due to uncertainty about their potential. Here, we integrate land-use assessment, hydroclimate and ecosystem modelling and economic optimization in a systems framework to better characterize the biojet-fuel potential of cellulosic feedstocks. Planting 23.2 Mha of marginal agricultural lands in the United States—roughly the land area of Wyoming—with the grass miscanthus satisfies the country’s projected 2040 jet-fuel demand (30 billion gallons yr−1) at an average cost of US$4.1 gallon−1. Centred in the Midwest region, this marginal land base is a mix of croplands (7.2 Mha) and non-croplands (16 Mha), whose conversion into miscanthus delivers productive biomass, regional cooling without soil moisture loss and the lowest system greenhouse gas emissions (at US$50 tCO2e−1 carbon price). It is unsustainable to source the same quantity of miscanthus biomass through marginal land conversions in the Plains region. Sustainability considerations generate different land conversion patterns than expected from a purely economic vantage point. Integrated approaches, such as used here, are imperative to realistically evaluate the sustainability of bio-based alternative feedstocks.
AB - Decarbonizing aviation requires, among other strategies, use of low-carbon liquid fuels, since electrified propulsion of large aircraft is not yet viable. However, commercialization of such ‘sustainable aviation fuels’ is lagging due to uncertainty about their potential. Here, we integrate land-use assessment, hydroclimate and ecosystem modelling and economic optimization in a systems framework to better characterize the biojet-fuel potential of cellulosic feedstocks. Planting 23.2 Mha of marginal agricultural lands in the United States—roughly the land area of Wyoming—with the grass miscanthus satisfies the country’s projected 2040 jet-fuel demand (30 billion gallons yr−1) at an average cost of US$4.1 gallon−1. Centred in the Midwest region, this marginal land base is a mix of croplands (7.2 Mha) and non-croplands (16 Mha), whose conversion into miscanthus delivers productive biomass, regional cooling without soil moisture loss and the lowest system greenhouse gas emissions (at US$50 tCO2e−1 carbon price). It is unsustainable to source the same quantity of miscanthus biomass through marginal land conversions in the Plains region. Sustainability considerations generate different land conversion patterns than expected from a purely economic vantage point. Integrated approaches, such as used here, are imperative to realistically evaluate the sustainability of bio-based alternative feedstocks.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41893-022-00990-w
DO - 10.1038/s41893-022-00990-w
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85141966664
SN - 2398-9629
VL - 6
SP - 158
EP - 168
JO - Nature Sustainability
JF - Nature Sustainability
IS - 2
ER -