Sentences with phrase «grasses as biofuels»

The aim of the new study, then, was to combine ecological and economic models into one, to get a better sense of the potential costs and benefits of grasses as biofuels.

Not exact matches

The studies do find some benefit from biofuels but only when planted on agricultural land too dry or degraded for food production or significant tree or plant growth and only when derived from native plants, such as a mix of prairie grasses in the U.S. Midwest.

But even better would be biofuels that use cheap, widespread plant matter such as leaves and grasses rather than food crops.

But biofuels that use cheap, widespread plant matter such as leaves and grasses would be even more attractive than food crops.

A recent study from the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center and published in Environmental Research Letters looks at how efficiently «second generation» biofuel crops — perennial, non-food crops such as switchgrass or native grasses — use rainwater and how these crops affect overall water balance.

In contrast, the grasses and other flowers and plants that grow naturally when such lands are left fallow — species such as goldenrod, frost aster, and couch grass, among others — can deliver roughly the same amount of biofuel energy per hectare per year if fertilized, yet also reducing CO2 by more than twice as much as corn.

Biofuel brewers would prefer to convert either agricultural waste or other nonfood plants, such as trees and grasses, to fuels.

In recent work, Brian Fox and colleagues at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at the University of Wisconsin - Madison characterized glycoside hydrolases, enzymes that digest cellulose and can be used to turn plants such as switch grass into biofuels.

For example, people in the surrounding countries use much wood, grass and agricultural wastes to cook with, which the team categorized as biofuel.

the chart fails to show that soy from brazil, the stuff served in that meatless urban restraunt menu, has many times the embodied energy of eating local grass fed beef, that the corn suggested as least energy consuming is only so due to vast scales of industrial monocroping that wipes out diversity and local edible foods habitat (and is used largely for pig and cow fodder if not biofuels, and so lays waste to half the midwest), that milk from a pastured cow or goat, or eggs from pastured chickens, are gaining thier energy from sources no human could eat.

We identified as most promising measures: the promotion of organic inputs on arable land instead of grassland, the introduction of perennials (grasses, trees) on arable set - aside land for conservation or biofuel purposes, to promote organic farming, to raise the water table in farmed peatland, and — with restrictions — zero tillage or conservation tillage.

Andrew Leakey is part of a five - year, $ 12 million study of grasses useful for biofuels that can grow with as little land, fertilizer, and water as possible.

In the second part of his series, he explores how biofuels made from perennial grasses can store carbon in the soil to actually have a negative greenhouse gas impact, and even points to the possibility of creating charcoal as a biproduct of biofuel production and then burying it in the ground: