Cellulosic Biofuels Analysis: Economic Analysis of Alternative Technologies

The passage of U.S. laws mandating and subsidizing advanced cellulosic biofuels may spur the development of a commercial cellulosic biofuels industry. However, a cellulosic industry will only develop if the overall economics including government incentives render investment in the sector attractive to private investors.This study compares the profitability of three biofuel production types: grain based ethanol, cellulosic biochemical ethanol, and cellulosic thermochemical biofuels. In order to compare the current profitability of each of the production types, the Biofuels Comparison Model (BCM) was developed. The BCM is a spreadsheet model that estimates the net present value (NPV) for each production type given input and output prices, technical, and financial assumptions. The BCM can be updated to reflect the current profitability through embedded web price links. The study finds that grain, biochemical, and thermochemical production types are all currently unprofitable when subsidies and mandates are ignored. However, the grain based ethanol process is predicted to be the most profitable (lowest loss) compared to the cellulosic biofuels. When the 2008 Farm Bill subsidies are added to the BCM, all three production types are projected to be profitable. With the addition of the different subsidies, the cellulosic biofuels are estimated to have higher NPV’s than grain based ethanol. When compared on an energy equivalent basis, the estimated cost of producing grain ethanol is $114/bbl. crude oil equivalent, biochemical ethanol$141/bbl., and thermochemical gasoline $108/bbl.biofuels, cellulosic biofuels, corn ethanol, biofuel economics

THE SYSTEMS APPROACH -- RESEARCH OR RESEARCH MANAGEMENT

Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Work-related teaching and learning methods to foster generic skills in Higher Education. An Italian experience

open5siWithin the framework of modernisation of higher education systems in Europe, universities are invited to go beyond a knowledge-based perspective focused on disciplinary approaches and to be more concentrated on encouraging generic skills to deal with today’s complex and unpredictable career paths. The literature about Work-Related Learning and Work-Integrated Learning offers evidence to research regarding contributions of work-related experiences to the development of generic skills. The first part of the article presents a literature review carried out following the matching among three main keywords: work-related learning, generic skills, and higher education. Resources focused on the integration/teaching of generic skills in formal curriculum or in co-curriculum work-related activities and they were collected in order to explore the link between work-related learning in higher education and the development of generic skills. The focus is to identify valuable considerations to improve teaching strategies and methods. The second part presents an Italian work-related experience developed within the course of “Organizational Intervention Research Methods,” which involved 22 master’s degree students. The work-related assignment will be described in addition to the content analysis process of the 22 collected texts and the findings about the development of generic skills.openDaniela, Frison; Concetta, Tino; Jonathan, W., Tyner; Monica, FedeliFrison, Daniela; Tino, Concetta; Jonathan, W.; Tyner, ; Fedeli, Monic

Farm Income Stabilization: A Central Goal for American and European Policies

The central thesis developed in this paper is that snapshot views of the global measures of agricultural support mask what is really happening in U.S. and E.U. agricultural policies. We demonstrate that American and European farmers are effectively protected from market risk by these policies. The level of PSE is largely determined by the level of world price. Most economists do not pay much attention to the role of agricultural policies in income stability. Yet farm income stability is clearly a prime objective of government policy both in the E.U. and the U.S. and probably elsewhere. We need to turn out attention to this objective if we are to produce policy analysis relevant to real world policy decisions.agricultural policy, market risks, agricultural income, U.S., E.U., agricultural and natural resource economics, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Implications of the Biofuels Boom for the Global Livestock Industry: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis

In this paper, we offer a general equilibrium analysis of the impacts of US and EU biofuel mandates for the global livestock sector. Our simulation boosts biofuel production in the US and EU from 2006 levels to mandated 2015 levels. We show that mandates will encourage crop production in both biofuel and non biofuel producing regions, while reducing livestock and livestock production in most regions of the world. The non-ruminant industry curtails its production more than other livestock industries. The numerical results suggest that the biofuel mandates reduce food production in most regions while they increase crude vegetable oils in almost all regions. Implementing biofuel mandates in the US and EU will increase croplands within the biofuel and non-biofuel producer regions. A large portion of this increase will be obtained from reduced grazing lands. The biofuel producing regions are expected to reduce their coarse grains exports and raise imports of oilseeds and vegetable oils. While all livestock industries use more biofuel byproducts in their animal feed rations, the dairy and other ruminant industry benefit most from the expansion of DDGS. We finally conclude that, while biofuel mandates have important consequences for the livestock industry, they do not harshly curtail these industries. This is largely due to the important role of byproducts in substituting for higher priced feedstuffs. In addition, with relatively inelastic food demands, producers are able to pass much of the price rise on to consumers. In general, US, EU, Meddle East & North Africa, and Russia will experience significant welfare loses due to the combined US and EU mandates, while Brazil, Japan, India, and East Asia are expected to get major gains.Biofuels, Livestock, Feed Ration, Biofuel Co-Product, Land Use, Livestock Production/Industries,

Biofuels for all? Understanding the Global Impacts of Multinational Mandates

The recent rise in world oil prices, coupled with heightened interest in the abatement of greenhouse gas emissions, has led to a sharp increase in domestic biofuels production around the world. Previous authors have devoted considerable attention to the impacts of these policies on a country-by-country basis. However, there are also strong interactions among these programs, as they compete in world markets for feedstocks and ultimately for a limited supply of global land. In this paper, we evaluate the interplay between two of the largest biofuels programs, namely the renewable fuel mandates in the US and the EU. We examine how the presence of each of these programs influences the other, and also how their combined impact influences global markets and land use around the world. We begin with an analysis of the origins of the recent bio-fuel boom, using the historical period from 2001-2006 for purposes of model validation. This was a period of rapidly rising oil prices, increased subsidies in the EU, and, in the US, there was a ban on the major competitor to ethanol for gasoline additives. Our analysis of this historical period permits us to evaluate the relative contribution of each of these factors to the global biofuel boom. We also use this historical simulation to establish a 2006 benchmark biofuel economy from which we conduct our analysis of future mandates. Our prospective analysis of the impacts of the biofuels boom on commodity markets focuses on the 2006-2015 time period, during which existing investments and new mandates in the US and EU are expected to substantially increase the share of agricultural products (e.g., corn in the US, oilseeds in the EU, and sugar in Brazil) utilized by the biofuels sector. In the US, this share could more than double from 2006 levels, while the share of oilseeds going to biodiesel in the EU could triple. Having established the baseline 2006-2015 scenario, we proceed to explore the interactions between the US and EU policies. This involves decomposing the contributions of each set of regional policies to the global changes in output and land use. The most dramatic interaction between the two sets of policies is for oilseed production in the US, where the sign of the output change is reversed in the presence of EU mandates (rising rather than falling). In other sectors, the interaction is more modest. However, when it comes to the impacts of these combined mandates on third economies, the two policies combine to have a much greater impact than just the US or just the EU policies alone.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Biofuels and their By-Products: Global Economic and Environmental Implications

The biofuel industry has been rapidly growing around the world in recent years. Several papers have used general equilibrium models and addressed the economy-wide and environmental consequences of producing biofuels at a large scale. They mainly argue that since biofuels are mostly produced from agricultural sources, their effects are largely felt in agricultural markets with major land use and environmental consequences. In this paper, we argue that virtually all of these studies have overstated the impact of liquid biofuels on agricultural markets due to the fact that they have ignored the role of by-products resulting from the production of biofuels. Feed by-products of the biofuel industry, such as Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles (DDGS) and biodiesel by-products (BDBP) such as soy and rapeseed meals, can be used in the livestock industry as substitutes for grains and oilseed meals used in this industry. Hence, their presence mitigates the price impacts of biofuel production on the livestock and food industries. The importance of incorporating by-products of biofuel production in economic models is well recognized by some partial equilibrium analyses of biofuel production. However, to date, this issue has not been tackled by those conducting CGE analysis of biofuels programs. Accordingly, this paper explicitly introduces DDGS and BDBP, the major by-products of grain based ethanol and biodiesel production processes, into a worldwide CGE model and analyzes the economic and environmental impacts of regional and international mandate policies designed to stimulate bioenergy production and use. We first explicitly introduce by-products of biofuel production into the GTAP-BIO database, originally developed by Taheripour et al. (2007). Then we explicitly bring in DDGS and BDBP into the Energy-Environmental version of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP-E) model, originally developed by Burniaux and Truong (2002), and recently modified by McDougall and Golub (2007) and Birur, Hertel, and Tyner (2008). The structure of the GTAP-E model is redesigned to handle the production and consumption of biofuels and their by-products, in particular DDGS, across the world. Unlike many CGE models which are characterized by single product sectors, here grain based ethanol and DDGS jointly are produced by an industry, named EthanolC. The biodiesel industry also produces two products of biodiesel and BDBP jointly. This paper divides the world economy into 22 commodities, 20 industries, and 18 regions and then examines global impacts of the US Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 and the European Union mandates for promoting biofuel production in the presence of by-products. We show that models with and without by-products demonstrate different portraits from the economic impacts of international biofuel mandates for the world economy in 2015. While both models demonstrate significant changes in the agricultural production pattern across the world, the model with by-products shows smaller changes in the production of cereal grains and larger changes for oilseeds products in the US and EU, and the reverse for Brazil. For example, the US production of cereal grains increases by 10.8% and 16.4% with and without by-products, respectively. The difference between these two numbers corresponds to 646 million bushels of corn. In the presence of by-products, prices change less due to the mandate policies. For example, the model with no by-products predicts that the price of cereal grains grows 22.7% in the US during the time period of 2006 to 2015. The corresponding number for the model with by-products is 14%. The model with no by-products predicts that the price of oilseeds increases by 62.5% in the EU during 2006-2015. In the presence of by-products, this price grows 56.4%. Finally, we show that incorporating DDGS into the model significantly changes the land use consequences of the biofuel mandate polices.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Kinase profiling of liposarcomas using RNAi and drug screening assays identified druggable targets.

BackgroundLiposarcoma, the most common soft tissue tumor, is understudied cancer, and limited progress has been made in the treatment of metastatic disease. The Achilles heel of cancer often is their kinases that are excellent therapeutic targets. However, very limited knowledge exists of therapeutic critical kinase targets in liposarcoma that could be potentially used in disease management.MethodsLarge RNAi and small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor screens were performed against the proliferative capacity of liposarcoma cell lines of different subtypes. Each small molecule inhibitor was either FDA approved or in a clinical trial.ResultsScreening assays identified several previously unrecognized targets including PTK2 and KIT in liposarcoma. We also observed that ponatinib, multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor, was the most effective drug with anti-growth effects against all cell lines. In vitro assays showed that ponatinib inhibited the clonogenic proliferation of liposarcoma, and this anti-growth effect was associated with apoptosis and cell cycle arrest at the G0/G1 phase as well as a decrease in the KIT signaling pathway. In addition, ponatinib inhibited in vivo growth of liposarcoma in a xenograft model.ConclusionsTwo large-scale kinase screenings identified novel liposarcoma targets and a FDA-approved inhibitor, ponatinib with clear anti-liposarcoma activity highlighting its potential therapy for treatment of this deadly tumor

A Benefit-Cost Assessment of New Vehicle Technologies and Fuel Economy in the U.S. Market

Increasingly stringent fuel economy and emissions regulations alongside efforts to reduce oil dependence have accelerated the global deployment of advanced vehicle technologies. In recent years, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and consumers have generally been successful in mutually deploying cleaner vehicle options with little sacrifice in cost, performance or overall utility. Projections regarding the challenges and impacts associated with compliance with mid- and long-term targets in the U.S., however, incur much greater uncertainty. The share of existing new vehicles that is expected to comply with future regulations, for example, falls below 10% by 2020. This article explores advanced technologies that result in reduced fuel consumption and emissions that are commercially available in 2014 Model Year compact and midsize passenger cars. A review of the recent research literature and publicly available cost and technical specification data addressing correlations between incremental cost and fuel economy is presented. This analysis reveals that a 10% improvement in the sales-weighted average fuel economy of passenger cars has been achieved between 2011 and 2014 at costs that are at or below levels anticipated by the regulations by means of reductions in weight, friction, and drag; advancements in internal combustion efficiency; turbocharging combined with engine downsizing; transmission upgrades; and the growth of hybrids. Benefit-cost analyses performed on best-selling models in the selected classifications reveal that consumers thus far are not substantially incentivized to purchase fuel economy. Under baseline conditions, benefit-cost ratios are above a breakeven value of unity for only 6 of 28 models employing improved fuel-economy technologies. Sales-weighted data indicate that the ‘‘average’’ consumer that elected to invest in greater fuel economy spent $1490 to realize a 17.3$1070. Thus savings were, on average, insufficient to cover technology costs in the baseline scenario. However, a sensitivity analysis reveals that a majority of new technologies become financially attractive to consumers when average fuel prices exceed $5.60/gallon, or when annual miles traveled exceed 16,400. The article concludes with techno-economic implications of the research on future fuel economy regulations for stakeholders. In general, the additional cost consumers incur in exchange for a given level of fuel economy improvement in the coming years will need to be steadily reduced compared to current levels to ensure that the expected benefits of fuel savings are financially warranted