IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v34y2009i1p233-241.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bio-methanol: How energy choices in the western United States can help mitigate global climate change

Author

Listed:
  • Vogt, Kristiina A.
  • Vogt, Daniel J.
  • Patel-Weynand, Toral
  • Upadhye, Ravi
  • Edlund, David
  • Edmonds, Robert L.
  • Gordon, John C.
  • Suntana, Asep S.
  • Sigurdardottir, Ragnhildur
  • Miller, Michael
  • Roads, Patricia A.
  • Andreu, Michael G.

Abstract

Converting available biomass from municipal, agricultural and forest wastes to bio-methanol can result in significant environmental and economic benefits. Keeping these benefits in mind, one plausible scenario discussed here is the potential to produce energy using bio-methanol in five states of the western United States. In this scenario, the bio-methanol produced is from different biomass sources and used as a substitute for fossil fuels in energy production. In the U.S. West, forest materials are the dominant biomass waste source in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, while in California, the greatest amount of available biomass is from municipal wastes. Using a 100% rate of substitution, bio-methanol produced from these sources can replace an amount equivalent to most or all of the gasoline consumed by motor vehicles in each state. In contrast, when bio-methanol powered fuel cells are used to produce electricity, it is possible to generate 12–25% of the total electricity consumed annually in these five states.

Suggested Citation

  • Vogt, Kristiina A. & Vogt, Daniel J. & Patel-Weynand, Toral & Upadhye, Ravi & Edlund, David & Edmonds, Robert L. & Gordon, John C. & Suntana, Asep S. & Sigurdardottir, Ragnhildur & Miller, Michael & R, 2009. "Bio-methanol: How energy choices in the western United States can help mitigate global climate change," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 233-241.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:34:y:2009:i:1:p:233-241
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2008.03.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148108000992
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2008.03.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jefferson, Michael, 2006. "Sustainable energy development: performance and prospects," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 571-582.
    2. Delucchi, Mark, 2006. "Lifecycle Analyses of Biofuels," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt1pq0f84z, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    3. Alanne, Kari & Saari, Arto, 2006. "Distributed energy generation and sustainable development," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 10(6), pages 539-558, December.
    4. Shapouri, Hosein & Duffield, James A. & Wang, Michael Q., 2002. "The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update," Agricultural Economic Reports 34075, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yang, Jing & Zhang, Peidong, 2011. "Assessment methods of carbon dioxide emitted from bioenergy utilization," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(6), pages 2684-2689, August.
    2. Tsita, Katerina G. & Pilavachi, Petros A., 2013. "Evaluation of next generation biomass derived fuels for the transport sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 443-455.
    3. García-Gusano, Diego & Iribarren, Diego, 2018. "Prospective energy security scenarios in Spain: The future role of renewable power generation technologies and climate change implications," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 202-209.
    4. Zhang, Mengzhu & Ge, Yunshan & Wang, Xin & Xu, Hongming & Tan, Jianwei & Hao, Lijun, 2021. "Effects of ethanol and aromatic compositions on regulated and unregulated emissions of E10-fuelled China-6 compliant gasoline direct injection vehicles," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 322-333.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Šantek, Božidar & Gwehenberger, Gernot & Šantek, Mirela Ivančić & Narodoslawsky, Michael & Horvat, Predrag, 2010. "Evaluation of energy demand and the sustainability of different bioethanol production processes from sugar beet," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 54(11), pages 872-877.
    2. de Alegría Mancisidor, Itziar Martínez & Díaz de Basurto Uraga, Pablo & Martínez de Alegría Mancisidor, Iñigo & Ruiz de Arbulo López, Patxi, 2009. "European Union's renewable energy sources and energy efficiency policy review: The Spanish perspective," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 100-114, January.
    3. Beghin, John C. & Jensen, Helen H., 2008. "Farm policies and added sugars in US diets," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 480-488, December.
    4. Burnes, Ellen & Wichelns, Dennis & Hagen, John W., 2005. "Economic and policy implications of public support for ethanol production in California's San Joaquin Valley," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 1155-1167, June.
    5. Eid, Cherrelle & Codani, Paul & Perez, Yannick & Reneses, Javier & Hakvoort, Rudi, 2016. "Managing electric flexibility from Distributed Energy Resources: A review of incentives for market design," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 237-247.
    6. Funcke, Simon & Bauknecht, Dierk, 2016. "Typology of centralised and decentralised visions for electricity infrastructure," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 67-74.
    7. Ryan, Lisa & Convery, Frank & Ferreira, Susana, 2006. "Stimulating the use of biofuels in the European Union: Implications for climate change policy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(17), pages 3184-3194, November.
    8. Blarke, Morten B., 2012. "Towards an intermittency-friendly energy system: Comparing electric boilers and heat pumps in distributed cogeneration," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 349-365.
    9. Kannan, Nadarajah & Vakeesan, Divagar, 2016. "Solar energy for future world: - A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1092-1105.
    10. Moroni, Stefano & Antoniucci, Valentina & Bisello, Adriano, 2016. "Energy sprawl, land taking and distributed generation: towards a multi-layered density," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 266-273.
    11. Fonseca, Juan D. & Commenge, Jean-Marc & Camargo, Mauricio & Falk, Laurent & Gil, Iván D., 2021. "Sustainability analysis for the design of distributed energy systems: A multi-objective optimization approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 290(C).
    12. Cheng Peng & Xunbo Wu & Yelin Fu & Kin Keung Lai, 2017. "Alternative approaches to constructing composite indicators: an application to construct a Sustainable Energy Index for APEC economies," Operational Research, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 747-759, October.
    13. Abbe Hamilton & Stephen B. Balogh & Adrienna Maxwell & Charles A. S. Hall, 2013. "Efficiency of Edible Agriculture in Canada and the U.S. Over the Past Three and Four Decades," Energies, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-30, March.
    14. Winden, Matthew & Cruze, Nathan & Haab, Tim & Bakshi, Bhavik, 2015. "Monetized value of the environmental, health and resource externalities of soy biodiesel," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 18-24.
    15. Castoldi, Nicola & Bechini, Luca & Ferrante, Antonio, 2011. "Fossil energy usage for the production of baby leaves," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 86-93.
    16. Chen, Yizhong & He, Li & Li, Jing, 2017. "Stochastic dominant-subordinate-interactive scheduling optimization for interconnected microgrids with considering wind-photovoltaic-based distributed generations under uncertainty," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 581-598.
    17. Jurasz, Jakub & Ciapała, Bartłomiej, 2017. "Integrating photovoltaics into energy systems by using a run-off-river power plant with pondage to smooth energy exchange with the power gird," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 21-35.
    18. René Bohnsack & Francesca Ciulli & Ans Kolk, 2021. "The role of business models in firm internationalization: An exploration of European electricity firms in the context of the energy transition," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 52(5), pages 824-852, July.
    19. Li, Qing'an & Maeda, Takao & Kamada, Yasunari & Murata, Junsuke & Furukawa, Kazuma & Yamamoto, Masayuki, 2016. "The influence of flow field and aerodynamic forces on a straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 260-271.
    20. Yu-Cheol Jeong & Eul-Bum Lee & Douglas Alleman, 2019. "Reducing Voltage Volatility with Step Voltage Regulators: A Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Korean Solar Photovoltaic Distributed Generation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-16, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:34:y:2009:i:1:p:233-241. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.