Integrated Spatially Explicit Landscape and Biofuel Supply Chain Network Design

An integrated biofuel supply chain (SC) system, from field to product, has the potential to help fuels from second generation bioenergy crops become competitive with fossil fuels and grain-based fuels. Landscape design, deciding where to plant bioenergy crops and how to manage that land, has been shown to improve the environmental impact of farm-scale biomass production (including soil carbon sequestration) but has been studied largely separately from biofuel supply chain network design (SCND). This paper proposes methods for the spatially explicit and simultaneous optimization of landscape design and SCND to explore their economic and environmental tradeoffs. Field scale data methods are described, key constraints for a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer linear model are introduced, and results from a realistic case study in southern MI, USA are presented that show economic and environmental benefits from the proposed approach.