Progress 10/01/11 to 09/30/13
Outputs
Target Audience: Professional (scientists and business) personnel Decision makers Farmers Utility companies Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Conference presentations Conference proceedings Online repository publications Training activities included course in both Energy Economics and Environmental Economics How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? The insight developed was disseminated to the community via conferences, publications in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters. An outreach component was also developed to educate local administration in NJ of the benefits of using waste to energy methods.. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
My research assessed the economic and environmental implications from the introduction of biobased products such as agricultural waste, food waste and algae. This research, for example, shed light on the impacts of the introduction of corn-based ethanol on the petroleum industry, including home heating fuels, residual fuels and bitumen (in addition to gasoline and diesel products). Because many of these petroleum products have significantly higher carbon content per gigajoule than gasoline and diesel, this can substantially impact the lifecycle analysis of biofuels. The introduction of biofuels can, in principle, reduce the GHG emissions of transportation fuels by 46-70%. The socioeconomic impact of biomass depends to a large extent on understanding and managing the process of adoption of viable technologies. In my research, I developed a conceptual and empirical framework that explains adoption of agricultural AD technologies while incorporating interdependencies at various production and consumption levels. When evaluating the environmental implications, I expand the lifecycle analysis to include emissions that occur away from the site of final production or consumption.
Publications
- Type:
Book Chapters
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Margaret Brennan, Gal Hochman, and Brian Schilling. Assessment of biomass potential and the implications to the state of New Jersey, in Modeling, Optimization and Bioeconomy, edited by Alberto Pinto and David Zilberman, 2014
- Type:
Book Chapters
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Michael Centore, Gal Hochman, and David Zilberman. Worldwide Survey of Biodegradable Feedstocks, Waste-to-Energy Technologies, and Adoption of Technologies, in Modeling, Optimization and Bioeconomy, edited by Alberto Pinto and David Zilberman, 2014
- Type:
Book Chapters
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Gal Hochman, Michael C Trachtenberg, and David Zilberman. Algae crops: co-production of algae biofuels, in Industrial Crops: Breeding for BioEnergy & Bioproducts, edited by Cruz, (Von) Mark and David Dierig, 2013
- Type:
Book Chapters
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Gal Hochman and David Zilberman. Algae Farming and its Bio-products, in Plants and Bioenergy, Editors: Carpita NC, Buckeridge MS, McCann MC, 2013
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
David Zilberman, Geoffrey Barrow, Gal Hochman, Deepak Rajagopal. On the indirect effect of biofuel, The American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2013.
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Progress 10/01/11 to 09/30/12
Outputs
OUTPUTS: My work evolves in response to feedback as well as economic and technological reality. This work builds on knowledge created by scholars, which work in the biomass to energy domain. This work also benefits from collaboration with faculty at Rutgers, as well as faculty located at the University of California Berkeley and University of California Los Angeles, and from work with graduate students. We produced a manuscript which tries to explain the differences in the adoption of agricultural anaerobic digestion in Europe and the United States. The insight developed in this project is disseminated to the community via conferences, as well as publications in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters. PARTICIPANTS: Mukund Bangalore: Undergraduate student at Rutgers. Geoffrey Barrow: Graduate student at the department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, at the University of California Berkeley. David Zilberman: A professor at the University of California Berkeley. Deepak Rajagopal: An assistant Professor at the University of California Los Angeles. Brian Schilling: An assistant professor at Rutgers University. Margaret Brennan-Tonetta: Associate Director, NJAES, and Assoc. Vice-President for Economic Growth and Development, Rutgers University. TARGET AUDIENCES: Target audience: 1) Congressional delegates, as well as EPA and DOE personnel. 2) Researchers in the bioenergy community, from the industry, public sector or the academia. 3) Policy advisors and policy modelers working with public institutions such as the US-EPA and DOE. 4) Attendees of national and international meetings of the US and International Associations of Energy Economics, as well as economic associations. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
My work aims to provide an economic understanding and to develop tools for the fundamental economic issues associated with the introduction of biomass. The work is evolving in response to feedback and economic and technological reality. Following the publication of our World Bank report (2011), we produced two manuscripts on food versus fuel prices. These manuscripts expand previous analysis that focused on the period between 1990-2007 forward to 2010. The results strengthened our earlier finding, and that when inventory levels decline, and expectations for needed inventory increase, prices tend to shoot up. Thus, while biofuels directly caused 20% of the increase in the price of corn, they made an extra contribution by depleting inventory and increasing demand for future inventory imposed by the mandate. The replacement of gasoline and diesel biofuels led to a reduction in the amount of petroleum byproducts coproduced with fuels, and this reduction in byproducts may affect greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. We call this impact the indirect co-product effect. We found that, under plausible assumptions, it may be significant and negate much of the indirect land-use effect. This work was presented at the TRB 2012 annual meetings, The AERE 2012 annual meetings, and we are preparing a paper for the Allied Social Science Association meeting in January, 2013. We argue that the use of an indirect land-use (ILU) effect in regulation is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, we have a limited understanding of the processes of land-use changes and our analysis suggests that ILU is unstable. It is changing over time and is subject to variations in weather, policy, and economic conditions. Second, once you consider one indirect effect, you may need to consider others, including indirect fuel use and byproduct effects, which lead to high transaction costs and slow innovation. We produced a manuscript that tries to explain differences in adoption of agricultural anaerobic digestion in Europe and the United States. In the manuscript we argue that Europe's regulatory framework, as well as its policy stability and the guaranteeing financial support in the form of a feed-in tariff has provided a fertile ground for the widespread adoption of the technology, with agricultural AD most popular in Germany, Denmark, Austria, and the Netherlands. Evidence indicates that rather than comparative technological advantage or abundance in feedstock availability, differences in adoption between Europe and the US are based on the amount of financial support and stability of the regulatory environment. During the last year, we worked on the impact of political economy and logistical constraints on assessments of biomass energy potential. This work produced a manuscript, where we argue that to more accurately assess biomass energy potential, analysis also needs to include political economy and logistical constraints, and that their introduction can result in a 30 percent differences.
Publications
- Gal Hochman, Deepak Rajagopal, and David Zilberman. Biofuels and Climate Change, In Handbook of Climate Change and Agriculture, Editors: Robert Mendelsohn and Ariel Dinar (Edward Elgar), 2012.
- David Zilberman, Deepak Rajagopal, and Gal Hochman. Economists Perspective on Biofuels. In Perspectives on Biofuels: Potential Benefits and Possible Pitfalls; Taylor, C., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2012.
- Gal Hochman, Deepak Rajagopal, Govinda Timilsina, and David Zilberman. Inventories and the Global Food-Commodity Prices. In Perspectives on Biofuels: Potential Benefits and Possible Pitfalls; Taylor, C., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2012.
- Gal Hochman, Scott Kaplan, Deepak Rajagopal, and David Zilberman. Biofuel and Food-Commodity Prices, Agriculture, 2012.
- David Zilberman, Gal Hochman, Deepak Rajagopal, Steve Sexton, and Govinda Timilsina. The Impact of Biofuels on Food Prices: Assessment of Findings, The American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2012.
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