Authors
Jason Hill, Stephen Polasky, Erik Nelson, David Tilman, Hong Huo, Lindsay Ludwig, James Neumann, Haochi Zheng, Diego Bonta
Publication date
2009/2/10
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Volume
106
Issue
6
Pages
2077-2082
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Description
Environmental impacts of energy use can impose large costs on society. We quantify and monetize the life-cycle climate-change and health effects of greenhouse gas (GHG) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions from gasoline, corn ethanol, and cellulosic ethanol. For each billion ethanol-equivalent gallons of fuel produced and combusted in the US, the combined climate-change and health costs are $469 million for gasoline, $472–952 million for corn ethanol depending on biorefinery heat source (natural gas, corn stover, or coal) and technology, but only $123–208 million for cellulosic ethanol depending on feedstock (prairie biomass, Miscanthus, corn stover, or switchgrass). Moreover, a geographically explicit life-cycle analysis that tracks PM2.5 emissions and exposure relative to U.S. population shows regional shifts in health costs dependent on fuel production systems. Because cellulosic ethanol can …
Total citations
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Scholar articles
J Hill, S Polasky, E Nelson, D Tilman, H Huo, L Ludwig… - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009