U.S. Billion-Ton Update
The report, Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion Ton Annual Supply (2005 BTS), published in April of 2005, was an estimate of "potential" biomass within the contiguous United States based on numerous assumptions about current and future feedstock inventory and production capacity, availability, and technology. In the 2005 BTS, a strategic analysis was undertaken to determine if U.S. agriculture and forest resources have the capability to potentially produce at least one billion dry tons of biomass annually in a sustainable manner—enough to displace approximately 30% of the country's present petroleum consumption.
The U.S. Billion-Ton Update: Biomass Supply for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry is organized similarly to the original report, with separate chapters for forest and agricultural biomass resources. It still excludes Alaska, Hawaii, and U.S. territories. The 2005 BTS combined resources that are currently used for energy production with unused and prospective resources because they all counted toward the billion-ton goal. In this update, a clearer distinction is made between currently used resources (e.g., corn grain, soybeans, pulping liquors, mill residues, and fuelwood) and unused and prospective resources available for additional energy (e.g., feedstock needed to meet the 16 billion gallons per year (BGY) of cellulosic biofuels and 4 BGY of advanced biofuels).
The Bioenergy Knowledge Discovery Framework website provides complementary and reference materials, as well as additional data and explanations. The website also provides tools to help present the results in custom tabular, graphic, and spatial formats.
For more information regarding the findings from the updated report, please view the report fact sheets:
- U.S. Billion-Ton Update: Summary Comparison with the 2005 BTS
- U.S. Billion-Ton Update: Summary Findings
- U.S. Billion-Ton Update: Energy Crops
- U.S. Billion-Ton Update: Forest Biomass and Wood Wastes
- U.S. Billion-Ton Update: Land-Use Change
- U.S. Billion-Ton Update: Crop Residues and Wastes
Errors in the printed version of the U.S. Billion-Ton Update are now corrected in online PDF copies of the report on the Biomass website and the Bioenergy KDF. View the errata document to see changes made.