Implications of Biofuel Policy on Water Resources of the USA

Rosa Dominguez-Faus, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005-1827

Developing a sustainable national biofuels program requires careful consideration of logistical concerns (e.g., suitable production and distribution infrastructure) and of unintended environmental impacts. An issue that has not been receiving the deserved degree of attention is that of the water and land resources demand to produce biofuels. Forecasting future demand of such natural resources and comparing them to available resources is a difficult task due to the many sources of uncertainty surrounding those matters. Water and land requirements of biofuels will depend on what feedstock is used as well as where the feedstock is grown. Additional temporal variability of climate plays a key role in forecasting the intensity of use of these resources as well as its availability. Changes in agricultural irrigation techniques, biotechnology advances such as improvement of crop yields, and conversion technology changes can alter the final value of overall land and water requirements. The high amount of variables playing a role in this analysis suggest that the proper method to make it is though the generation of possible future case scenarios but unfortunately these issues have not be addressed by many scientist. In this presentation we show a comparison of water requirements for different traditional feedstocks given current statistics, current state-of-the-art technology and current biofuel projections of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, as constructed by researchers at Rice University. This represents a baseline scenario. Ongoing research at Rice is constructing alternative scenarios, using an agricultural-climatic model combined with multiple potential technological, political and climatic changes.