Native Grasses for Biomass Production at High Elevations - Industrial Crops: Breeding for BioEnergy and Bioproducts - page 122

suitable and available for biomass production is challenging. Determining the
production and production stability potential of these lands for biomass production
to meet the demands of a particular biorefinery is equally challenging.
As previously discussed, in order to establish the agricultural production seg-
ment of the supply chain, the perennial grass field trials should be replicated at
multiple sites. Great care should be taken to measure cost, input, and yield data to
ensure that agricultural producers set proper expectations for field performance.
Cost and yield trends will help growers estimate feedstock quantity and contract
price parameters for biorefinery contracts, and a critical mass of agricultural pro-
ducers will be necessary in order to attract capital investment for a biorefinery.
Likewise, biorefineries will need to ramp up production levels to a point where
they are able to provide predictable quantities of biofuel to fulfill fuel contracts and
to ensure that there are no fuel supply disruptions. As previously noted, in order to
establish a commercially viable market, it is important to control production costs,
from growing and biorefining the feedstock, so that per gallon biofuel price is
competitive with other commercially available fuels. It is also expected that the
agricultural producers and biorefinery will earn a reasonable rate of return on their
production - otherwise, there would not be an incentive for them to continue the
biofuel supply chain. A fuel supply contract, possibly for a city or county service
vehicle fleet, could provide assurance to producers that there will be a demand for
the products that they produce. In small, rural economies like those in the Mountain
West, there is a potential for the regionally grown, processed, and supply chain to
develop and provide a cost-competitive product.
From a practical perspective, recent technological advances have improved the
economic feasibility for developing non-conventional natural gas plays (defined as
shale gas, coal bed methane, and tight gas sands) that can yield reliable natural gas
production with high immediate payback on investment and competitive consumer
prices. Many of these natural gas resources are located in the rural Mountain West
communities that have been the subject of this chapter. Hence, natural gas devel-
opment, rather than biofuel development, may actually serve as the low-cost energy
resource that drives economic development in these regions. On the downside,
while the benefit of low energy prices have been well established, unlike
agricultural-based economies that create diversified economic sectors, oil and
natural gas development leads to notoriously undiversified regional economies
often leading to boom and bust economic cycles [ 122 , 123 ]. While the USA is
projected to be a net energy exporter during the next 30 years, this enthusiasm
should be put in perspective with the perceived natural gas shortage from just a
decade earlier. There is considerable economic benefit projected for natural gas
development in the Mountain West; diversification of energy resources should
always be an important goal to manage risk and to facilitate energy security.
At the present time, Mountain West communities are poised to benefit from the
anticipated boom in natural gas production that is projected to displace coal as an
electricity generation resource and eventually displace gasoline and diesel as a
source for heavy fleet vehicles. There is little disagreement that natural gas reduces
net greenhouse gas emissions compared to coal-based electricity generation