Abstract
Calculations of energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and other environmental impacts from biofuel production often allocate impacts between biofuel and its co-products by calculating that co-products substitute for other products. We illustrate the issues of co-product allocation with a case study of corn-derived ethanol, and show that the choice of allocation procedure and parameters can significantly influence the results. This is an open issue in environmental lifecycle assessment methodology; there are research opportunities to determine co-product allocation values by using data that relate co-product utilization to land use or market changes.
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Notes
- 1.
1Â MJÂ =Â 106 Joules.
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Thomas, V.M., Choi, D.G., Luo, D. (2015). Biofuel Lifecycle Energy and Environmental Impacts: The Challenges of Co-product Allocation. In: Eksioglu, S., Rebennack, S., Pardalos, P. (eds) Handbook of Bioenergy. Energy Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20092-7_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20092-7_11
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