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Economic and Environmental Assessment of Seed and Rhizome CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Aberystwyth Research Portal Aberystwyth University Economic and environmental assessment of seed and rhizome propagated Miscanthus in the UK Hastings, Astley F.; Mos, Michal; Yesufu, Jalil A.; McCalmont, Jon; Schwarz, Kai-Uwe; Shafiei, Reza; Ashman, Chris; Nunn, Christopher; Schüle, Heinrich; Salvatore, Cosentino; Scalici, Giovanni; Scordia, Danilo; Wagner, Moritz; Clifton-Brown, John Published in: Frontiers in Plant Science DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2017.01058 Publication date: 2017 Citation for published version (APA): Hastings, A. F., Mos, M., Yesufu, J. A., McCalmont, J., Schwarz, K-U., Shafiei, R., ... Clifton-Brown, J. (2017). Economic and environmental assessment of seed and rhizome propagated Miscanthus in the UK. Frontiers in Plant Science, 8, [1058]. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2017.01058 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Aberystwyth Research Portal (the Institutional Repository) are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Aberystwyth Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Aberystwyth Research Portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. tel: +44 1970 62 2400 email: [email protected] Download date: 03. Oct. 2019 fpls-08-01058 June 29, 2017 Time: 16:19 # 1 ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 30 June 2017 doi: 10.3389/fpls.2017.01058 Economic and Environmental Assessment of Seed and Rhizome Propagated Miscanthus in the UK Astley Hastings1*, Michal Mos2, Jalil A. Yesufu3, Jon McCalmont4, Kai Schwarz5, Reza Shafei4, Chris Ashman4, Chris Nunn4, Heinrich Schuele6, Salvatore Cosentino7, Giovanni Scalici7, Danilo Scordia7, Moritz Wagner8 and John Clifton-Brown4 1 Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom, 2 Blankney Estates Ltd., Lincolnshire, United Kingdom, 3 Bangor University, Bangor, United Kingdom, 4 Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom, 5 Julius Kühn-Institut - Bundesforschungsinstitut für Kulturpflanzen, Braunschweig, Germany, 6 Das Deutsche Agrarzentrum, Potash, Ukraine, 7 Dipartimento di Agricoltura, Alimentazione e Ambiente (Di3A), Università degli Studi di Catania, Catania, Italy, 8 Institute of Crop Science, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany Growth in planted areas of Miscanthus for biomass in Europe has stagnated since 2010 due to technical challenges, economic barriers and environmental concerns. Edited by: These limitations need to be overcome before biomass production from Miscanthus Emily Anne Heaton, Iowa State University, United States can expand to several million hectares. In this paper, we consider the economic and Reviewed by: environmental effects of introducing seed based hybrids as an alternative to clonal Matt Yost, M. x giganteus (Mxg). The impact of seed based propagation and novel agronomy United States Department of Agriculture, United States was compared with current Mxg cultivation and used in 10 commercially relevant, field Jason Hill, scale experiments planted between 2012 and 2014 in the United Kingdom, Germany, University of Minnesota, United States and Ukraine. Economic and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions costs were quantified *Correspondence: for the following production chain: propagation, establishment, harvest, transportation, Astley Hastings [email protected] storage, and fuel preparation (excluding soil carbon changes). The production and utilization efficiency of seed and rhizome propagation were compared. Results show Specialty section: that new hybrid seed propagation significantly reduces establishment cost to below This article was submitted to −1 Crop Science and Horticulture, £900 ha . Calculated GHG emission costs for the seeds established via plugs, though a section of the journal relatively small, was higher than rhizomes because fossil fuels were assumed to heat Frontiers in Plant Science glasshouses for raising seedling plugs (5.3 and 1.5 kg CO2 eq. C Mg [dry matter Received: 16 December 2016 −1 Accepted: 31 May 2017 (DM)] ), respectively. Plastic mulch film reduced establishment time, improving crop Published: 30 June 2017 economics. The breakeven yield was calculated to be 6 Mg DM ha−1 y−1, which is Citation: about half average United Kingdom yield for Mxg; with newer seeded hybrids reaching Hastings A, Mos M, Yesufu JA, 16 Mg DM ha−1 in second year United Kingdom trials. These combined improvements McCalmont J, Schwarz K, Shafei R, Ashman C, Nunn C, Schuele H, will significantly increase crop profitability. The trade-offs between costs of production Cosentino S, Scalici G, Scordia D, for the preparation of different feedstock formats show that bales are the best option Wagner M and Clifton-Brown J −1 −1 (2017) Economic and Environmental for direct firing with the lowest transport costs (£0.04 Mg km ) and easy on-farm Assessment of Seed and Rhizome storage. However, if pelleted fuel is required then chip harvesting is more economic. Propagated Miscanthus in the UK. We show how current seed based propagation methods can increase the rate at Front. Plant Sci. 8:1058. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2017.01058 which Miscanthus can be scaled up; ∼×100 those of current rhizome propagation. Frontiers in Plant Science| www.frontiersin.org 1 June 2017| Volume 8| Article 1058 fpls-08-01058 June 29, 2017 Time: 16:19 # 2 Hastings et al. Miscanthus Economic and GHG Costs These rapid ramp rates for biomass production are required to deliver a scalable and economic Miscanthus biomass fuel whose GHG emissions are ∼1/20th those of natural gas per unit of heat. Keywords: biomass, bioenergy, upscaling, GHG-cost, economic-costs, agronomy, seed-propagation, Miscanthus INTRODUCTION get around £20 MWh to cover operating costs (OPEX) and the amortization of capital expenditure (CAPEX). It is therefore Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere have to be clear that without taxes on carbon and generation subsidies, curtailed so that global warming is limited to between 1.5 to renewables are not currently economically competitive. In order 2◦C as agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, for these renewable energy systems to be used to reduce signed by 197 countries and currently ratified by 142 countries GHG emissions in an economically viable way, it is important including the largest GHG emitters, the United States and China. to quantify the economic and environmental costs of energy An important action to achieve this GHG emissions goal is production for a range of technological options. to decarbonize the energy supply (Intergovernmental Panel on Bioenergy systems are one form of renewable energy. After Climate Change [IPCC], 2014a,b). The key challenge is to achieve centuries of burning wood for energy or processing forage into this equitably, without harming the economy or the environment. horse power, the first generation of bioenergy feedstocks were Nuclear and renewable energy systems powered by wind, solar, food crops, such as maize, oil seed rape, sugar cane, and oil hydro, tidal, and biomass have low, but not zero GHG emissions palm, used to produce bioethanol and biodiesel. These required per GJ of energy produced. They all require infrastructure to a high input in terms of fertilizer and energy, which increased be built with energy intensive materials and have operating their carbon footprint (St. Clair et al., 2008). In addition, the GHG costs, particularly where the production and distribution carbon cost of converting the food crop feedstock to bioethanol of energy vectors still rely on a fossil fuel based supply chains. or biodiesel was significant with a low ratio of energy produced There are also emissions associated with land use change, with to energy input, high GHG cost and a low productivity in terms indirect consequences that are difficult to quantify in many cases, of GJ of energy per hectare of land (Hastings et al., 2012). although a methodology for annualized GHG emissions from Another drawback of using food crops for energy production is carbon stock change due to land-use change has been developed the pressure put on the balance of supply and demand for these by the Directive 2009/28/CE, and recently amended in the EU feedstocks which can impact the cost of food (Valentine et al., 2015/1513. 2011) and the increase of indirect land use change (ILUC) to At present the economic cost per unit of renewable energy increase the arable cropped area (Searchinger et al., 2008) which generated is more than that produced by systems powered by consequentially increases their environmental footprint. fossil fuels, though it should be noted that the lower price of The second generation bioenergy crop Miscanthus almost fossil fuel is largely determined by huge, and largely hidden, always has a smaller environmental footprint than first national and global subsidies for production and use, totalling generation annual bioenergy ones (Heaton et al., 2004, 2008; between 0.5 to 2
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