News & Events
August 5-10, 2012 – Several ORNL staff will participate in the 2012 Ecological Society of America (ESA) Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon.
- A Special Session, "A Debate on the Sustainability of Biomass Production for Energy", will focus on the proposition “Producing bioenergy can be sustainable for habitat availability and biodiversity, and can eschew the risk of new invaders.” This formal debate will allow opening statements by each of six experts, followed by rebuttals, with audience questions entertained during the final 30 minutes. The audience will be polled before and after to determine the winners. H. Jager is an organizer and R. Efroymson will represent the “for” position.
- Virginia Dale will speak in the Symposium "Bioenergy and Biodiversity: Oxymoron or Opportunity?" on “Environmental and socioeconomic indicators of bioenergy sustainability.”
- Keith Kline will speak on “Models, causal analysis and scientific methods for understanding land-use change (LUC) dynamics.”
October 24 & 25, Vonore, Tennessee - Biomass: From Grow to Go.
Nov 5-8: 2012 Woody Crops Conference to be held in the Oak Ridge-Knoxville area of Tennessee.
Council on Sustainable Biomass Production - Press Release, Final CSBP Standard, CSBP 2012 Membership List
Feb 6th -Congratulations to both Keith Kline and Virginia Dale who accepted the following award which was presented at the National Biodiesel Conference for Innovation.
Feb 5-8 - Virginia Dale and Keith Kline will present at the National Biodiesel Conference & Expo 2012 in Orlando, Florida. Sustainability Symposium Wed February 8th.
Virginia Dale and Mark Downing participated in the first Biomass: From Grow to Go Field Day biomass from grow to go a university of tennessee field day and workshop event october-25-26-2011 vonore tn held by the University of Tennessee. Over 600 people attended the farm day and over 400 for the second day! In addition to general attendees, over 600 middle and high school students scheduled attended the second day of the event at the biorefinery and Biomass Innovation Park. Through the two days, over 1,000 people heard about biomass production, preprocessing, and conversion. Virginia gave a presentation on “Environmental Stewardship” based on what has been learned by the team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory under sponsorship of the Department of Energy’s Office of Biomass Program.
October 18-19, 2011 – CRC Workshop on Life Cycle Analysis of Biofuels. Argonne National Laboratory. "Perspectives on Land-Use Change Analyses" presented by Keith Kline. Copy of abstract.
ORNL contributes to IEA Bioenergy Joint Task review of land-use change issues in Campinas, Brazil" at the IEA Bioenergy Joint-Task 38/40/43 Workshop "Quantifying and managing land use effects of bioenergy".
Top Ten Steps to Improve Quantification of Land-Use Change Effects of Bioenergy Systems,
Challenges to Certify Sustainability for Bioenergy Production, Moving Forward: Policies to Improve Land Use & Address Social Concerns (when effects "always depend")
Vonore biomass plant could go commerical as switchgrass gains ground.
DOE Releases New Billion-Ton Study Highlighting Opportunities for Growth in Bioenergy Resources
August 21-25, 2011 – 4th World Conference on Ecological Restoration
Virginia Dale will attend the 4th World Conference on Ecological Restoration for the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) in Mérida, Mexico. Dale will give a presentation on "Integrating climate change with land-use change"
July 27-28, 2011 - Biomass 2011
"Replace the Whole Barrel, Supply the Whole Market". National Harbor, MD.
BRIEF NOTE: The Jason Project won the Best Science or Health Curriculum category at the CODiEs for Operation: Tectonic Fury to which ORNL staff contributed. Award
Collaborators: Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center GLBRC
July 1, 2011 - Carolyn Hoagland was recently awarded the Volkswagen Distinguished Scholar for her work in learning about how farmers choose to grow bioenergy crops.
Bioenergy Knowledge Discovery Framework (KDF), sponsored by DOE and developed by a team at ORNL led by CBES member Budhendra Bhaduri, now has its own interactive website where registered users can interact, share and have access to technical data, reports, and a variety of other features of the website related to a sustainable bioenergy industry.
National Research Council (NRC) - Rebecca A. Efroymson of ORNL has been appointed to the committee Sustainable Development of Algal Biofuels
Models, Science and the Precautionary Principle
Oak Ridge National Laboratory staff organized two symposia for the April 6-10, 2010, meeting of the US chapter of the International Association of Landscape Ecology in Athens, Georgia. Jager led Reshaping Landscapes: Bioenergy and Biodiversity and Keith Kline and Virginia Dale organized Reshaping Landscapes: Bioenergy and Land-use Change.
April 21, 2011 - Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals
Keith Kline (ORNL) and Joel Velasco (UNICA) chaired a symposium on Biomass Sustainability and Land Use for SIMs 32nd Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals, April 21, in Clearwater, Florida. View Presentation
March 2011 - USEPA Report
Rebecca Efroymson has been selected as a peer reviewer for the "Biofuels and the Environment: First Triennial Report to Congress." The peer review meeting was held in Washington, D.C. in March 2011.
Briefing on Advances in Biomass
The University of Tennessee’s Office of Biomass Programs held a briefing for southern states on Advances in Bioenergy on Jan. 28-29, 2010; and all 16 PowerPoint presentations from that briefing, including one on sustainability issues contributed by CBES, are now available. View Presentations
Land-Use Change and Bioenergy Workshop Report
A key conclusion is that current modeling efforts are limited by the availability of appropriate data sets and knowledge of driving factors of land-use change. The report emphasizes that uncertainty in land-use change models should be acknowledged, documented, quantified, and reduced and that models should be validated based on empirical data. Land Use Change and Bioenergy Report
Biofuels: Implications for Land Use and Biodiversity
The Ecological Society of America published this report by Virginia Dale, Keith Kline, John Wiens, and Joseph Fargione in January, 2010. The report discusses the importance of analyzing biofuel-related changes in land use at the ecosystem level to assess potential effects and develop more sustainable bioenergy systems. It reviews the complex relationships among land use, carbon emissions, and biodiversity that can be associated with different bioenergy choices. ESA Biofuel Report
