Trick or Treat! 20 Perennially Hot, Free Downloads for your Bio-Halloween Treat Bag

This Hallowe’en, put some data in your pumpkin — like all good Hallowe’en treats, they’re free for the asking. And no tricks required — just click and go.

Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch, flies through the air, and showers generously structured offtake agreements on the most sincere biobased business plans. Or so we heard.

But just in case you miss out this year — as Hallowe’en looms, here are 20 perennially popular, free downloads — data sets that you’ll need on your road from biobased concept to full-fledged commercial success.

What is the DOE’s Bioenergy KDF, anyway?

These are all available via the US Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Knowledge Discovery Framework — known in DOE-speak as “the KDF”. And if there’s any cognate to “the 411” in the world of all things bio, it just might be this collection of datasets, reports, tools and apps.

In the KDF, users can search the Bioenergy Library to find data sets, publications, and models on a wide variety of bioenergy topics; use the Map interface to visualize, analyze, download, and export geospatial data; and browse the site’s collection of specialized Tools & Apps, which can also be launched on the map.

It’s been recently redesigned to improve the user experience, and is well worth a visit, here.

20 Hot & Free downloads for Bio-Halloween

Son of Billion Ton: US Billion Ton Update: Biomass supply for a bioenergy and bioproducts industry

Download it here.

What is it? The follow-up report to the “Billion Ton Study” — U.S. Billion-Ton Update: Biomass Supply for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry (generally referred to as the 2011 BT2) complete report ~7.3 MB, expands on the 2005 BTS to include a spatial, county-by-county inventory of potentially available primary feedstocks; price and available quantities for the individual feedstocks; and, a more rigorous treatment and modeling of resource sustainability.

Billion Ton Study Data Explorer

Download it here.
What is it? The report, Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion Ton Annual Supply (generally referred to as the Billion-Ton Study or 2005 BTS), was an estimate of “potential” biomass within the contiguous United States based on numerous assumptions about current and future inventory production capacity, availability, and technology.

3. Bioenergy Map

Download it here.
What is it? It’s the KDF’s signature mapping tool – overlay county, state and national data sets onto a US map for visualization and analysis.

4. BioFuels Atlas

Download it here.
What is it? The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) originally developed this application for biopower with funding from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Blue Skyways Collaborative. The Department of Energy’s Office of Biomass Program provided funding for biofuels functionality.

5. Spatially explicit modelling of biofuel crops in Europe

Download it here.
What is it? This paper describes a methodology to explore the (future) spatial distribution of biofuel crops in Europe. Two main types of biofuel crops are distinguished: biofuel crops used for the production of biodiesel or bioethanol, and second-generation biofuel crops. A multiscale, multi-model approach is used in which biofuel crops are allocated over the period 2000?2030.

6. FAPRI

Download it here.
What is it? Non-Spatial, multi-market partial Equilibrium model

7. IMPACT

Download it here.
What is it? A partial equilibrium model that captures the demand and trades for food, feed and biofuel feedstock.

8. GTAP

Download it here.
What is it? It’s a widely-used general equilibrium model – often used in land-use change studies. A must-know.

9. Impact of Biofuel Industry Expansion on Grain Utilization and Distribution: Preliminary Results of Iowa Grain and Biofuel Survey

Download it here.
What is it? This paper examines the impact of biofuel expansion on grain utilization and distribution at the state and cropping district level as most of grain producers and handlers are directly influenced by the local changes. We conducted a survey to understand the utilization and flows of corn, ethanol and its co-products, such as dried distillers grains (DDG) in Iowa.

10. Choice of optimum feedstock portfolio for a cellulosic ethanol plant – A dynamic linear programming solution

Download it here.
What is it? When the lignocellulosic biofuels industry reaches maturity and many types of biomass sources become economically viable, management of multiple feedstock supplies – that vary in their yields, density (tons per unit area), harvest window, storage and seasonal costs, storage losses, transport distance to the production plant – will become increasingly important for the success of individual enterprises.

11. National Bioenergy Routing Model Fact Sheet

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What is it? This document provides an overview of the National Bioenergy Routing model that is integrated within the Bioenergy KDF.

12. Biomass Energy Data Book

Download it here.
What is it? The Biomass Energy Data Book is a statistical compendium prepared and published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under contract with the Biomass Program in the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) program of the Department of Energy (DOE). Designed for use as a convenient reference, the book represents an assembly and display of statistics and information that characterize the biomass industry, from the production of biomass feedstocks to their end use, including discussions on sustainability.

13. Biomass Supply from Alternative Cellulosic Crops and Crop Residues: A Preliminary Spatial Bioeconomic Modeling Approach

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What is it? By modeling the profitability of alternative crop production practices, it captures the opportunity cost of replacing current crops by cellulosic biomass crops. The model draws upon biophysical crop input-output coefficients, price and cost data, and spatial transportation costs in the context of profit maximization theory. Yields are simulated using temperature, precipitation and soil quality data with various commercial crops and potential new cellulosic biomass crops

14. Modeling Biofuels Expansion in a Changing Global Environment

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What is it? This paper examines the impact of declining energy prices on biofuels production and use and its implications to agricultural commodity markets. It uses PEATSim, a dynamic partial equilibrium, multi-commodity, multi-country global trade model of the agriculture sector to analyze the interaction between biofuel, crop and livestock sectors.

15. The National Bioenergy Routing Model

Download it here.
What is it? The National Bioenergy Routing Model is a multi-modal transportation model that provides an easy user-interface to analyze basic routing results for transporting biomass and bioenergy products. The underlying highway, railway, and waterway data has been augmented with additional elements of particular interest to bioenergy (transload stations, processing terminals, biorefineries, etc.). Users of the routing model can also perform contingency analysis by selectively constraining various routing parameters.

16. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, Agriculture Census

Download it here.
What is it? The Census of Agriculture, taken every five years, is a complete count of U.S. farms and ranches and the people who operate them. The Census looks at land use and ownership, operator characteristics, production practices, income and expenditures. For America’s farmers and ranchers, the Census of Agriculture is their voice, their future and their responsibility. The Census provides the only source of uniform, comprehensive and impartial agricultural data for every county in the nation.

17. Deriving Comprehensive County-Level Crop Yield and Area Data for U.S. Cropland

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What is it? Ground-based data on crop production in the USA is provided through surveys conducted by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) and the Census of Agriculture (AgCensus). Statistics from these surveys are widely used in economic analyses, policy design, and for other purposes. However, missing data in the surveys presents limitations for research that requires comprehensive data for spatial analyses.We created comprehensive county-level databases for nine major crops of the USA for a 16-yr period, by filling the gaps in existing data reported by NASS and AgCensus.

18. A Spatial Equilibrium Model of the Impact of Bio-Fuels Energy Policy on Grain Transportation Flows

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What is it? Traffic flows in the U.S. have been affected by the substantial increase and, as of January 2009, decrease in biofuel production and use. This paper considers a framework to study the effect on grain transportation flows of the 2005 Energy Act and subsequent legislation, which mandated higher production levels of biofuels, e.g. ethanol and biodiesels

19. USDA Agricultural Baseline Projections

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What is it? USDA Agricultural Projections for 2011-20, released in February 2011, provide longrun projections for the farm sector for the next 10 years. These annual projections cover agricultural commodities, agricultural trade, and aggregate indicators of the sector, such as farm income and food prices.

20. The Economic Impacts of Bioenergy Crop Production on U.S. Agriculture

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What is it? In response to energy security concerns, alternative energy programs such as biomass energy systems are being
developed to provide energy in the 21st century. For the biomass industry to expand, a variety of feedstocks will need
to be utilized. Large scale production of bioenergy crops could have significant impacts on the United States agricultural
sector in terms of quantities, prices and production location of traditional crops as well as farm income.