The University of Wyoming has recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation for funding research into biofuels and their impact on the economy.
UW joins Montana State University and the University of South Dakota as part of the Water, Agriculture, Food, Energy Research Nexus (WAFERx) team, which is dedicated to researching and modeling the impact of alternative fuels in the Upper Missouri River Basin.
“We are studying the potential for innovations in agriculture and energy in the Upper Missouri River Basin,” the outreach coordinator for the program here at UW, Selena Gerace, said. “Our big research question is exploring bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.”
This study will be an important tool to help combat global warming, as the proposed project would be the most effective.
“It is important because in all the global modeling that is being done right now they are predicting that bioenergy with carbon capture and storage is the only way we are going to achieve negative carbon dioxide emissions,” Gerace said.
The creation of biofuel is not only coming from corn and soybeans, but the project is also looking at new generation biofuels that arise from sources such as switch grass and flaxseed.
The other half of the project is carbon capture, which is done in two different ways. One is where carbon dioxide is captured from power plants and transported to underground storage areas and the other is growing crops that are perennial, like switch grass, so that there is more carbon taken from the atmosphere and put back into the natural carbon cycle.
The program also looks at modeling the climate, agriculture and economy of the entire Upper Missouri River Basin.
“This region has an incredible aridity gradient, from rain shadow deserts in Wyoming and the badlands in the Dakotas and Montana, to the eastern Dakotas where corn and soy have pushed out most of the natural ecosystem,” an associate professor at Montana State University, Dr. Paul Stoy, said.
Dr. Stoy stressed how important it is to have all three universities working together on this project, as it is not only such a large area, but each university brings their own area of expertise to the table. The University of Wyoming’s main field of study in this project is the impact biofuels and climate change will have on the rural economy.
“We had a stakeholder workshop,” head of the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at UW, Dr. Ben Rashford, said. “And their biggest concern from the folks that we talked to was about local economies and communities and maintaining the local agricultural culture.”
The research Rashford is doing is breaking new ground, as the biofuel energy economy is still relatively new. Not only does he have to model the impact that a need of biofuels would create, but Dr. Rashford must also model the changing climate to predict areas where farming might relocate.
“And to make the whole thing even more difficult, modeling this in the context of a changing climate,” Rashford said. “Even if globally we move in directions to reduce climate change, the climate is still changing, which means some places where we currently can’t grow certain crops we may be able to in 25 years.”
The WAFERx program works toward providing businesses and communities within the region with the best information on how to proceed in our changing world. There is going to be a couple overarching models that look at different levels of policy implementation, from lax to aggressive, and even a model that looks to be as ecologically conservative as possible.
