Data for: Multifunctional landscapes for dedicated bioenergy crops lead to low-carbon market-competitive biofuels

Switchgrass is a promising feedstock for cellulosic biorefineries, due to
its ability to maintain comparatively high biomass yields across a wide
range of soil and climatic conditions. However, there is an incomplete
understanding of the economic and environmental tradeoffs associated with
cultivating switchgrass on low-productivity land for conversion to
biofuels. This study surveys prior literature and demonstrates a new
integrated assessment framework, including agroecological, ecosystem
services valuation, technoeconomic, and life-cycle assessment models, to
quantify and contextualize the economic and environmental impacts of
switchgrass cultivation on marginal land with downstream conversion to
biofuels. Monetizing and incorporating the value of ecosystem services,
such as improved water quality benefits from nitrate and sediment
reductions, climate change mitigation benefits from CO2 emission
reduction, and recreational and pollination benefits from increased
biodiversity, the modeled multifunctional landscape reduces the ethanol
production cost by 33.3–58.9 cents/L-gasoline-equivalent ($1.3–2.2/gge).
Planting switchgrass in low-productivity land improves soil health,
resulting in the carbon footprint reduction credit of 12.8–20.2 gCO2e/MJ.
For an improved switchgrass-to-ethanol conversion pathway with the maximum
benefits from ecosystem services, the minimum ethanol selling price and
carbon footprint of ethanol, respectively, could reach to 31
cents/L-gasoline-equivalent (47% reduction relative to average gasoline
price) and 3 gCO2e/MJ (97% reduction relative to gasoline). This
low-carbon renewable ethanol leads to substantial State and/or Federal
policy incentives (~$1/L-gasoline-equivalent) providing a large benefit to
biorefinery operators, farmers, and the public as a whole.