Economic analysis of biofuel production from rangelands

Use of ethanol as a fuel for automobiles will not make economic, or environmental, sense until sustainable, commercial scale production systems for conversion of cellulosic materials to ethanol are available.  Making ethanol from cellulose practical will require considerable advancements in the industrial cellulose-to-ethanol conversion process as well as in the technologies of plant material feed-stock production, harvesting and transportation. Rangelands have the potential to be an economically competitive source of cellulosic feed-stocks for ethanol production.  Advantages that rangelands have over croplands and forests include lower opportunity costs for other competing land uses and lower energy based input requirements for biomass production.  There are, however, disadvantages that will potentially make ethanol feed-stocks from rangelands more expensive compared to crop and/or forest lands.  These include lower sustained annual biomass production per unit area, higher harvesting costs due to heterogeneity of plant materials and inaccessibility of terrain and greater transportation costs due to larger surface areas being required to support commercially viable refineries and an undeveloped infrastructure for delivering finished product from remote rural areas where refineries are likely to be located.  Other challenges to making ethanol feed-stocks from rangelands cost effective include the development of production and/or harvesting programs that are ecosystem friendly and that are compatible with other land uses and land management goals.  Accomplishment of such multiple use goals may require even more land area to supply each refinery.