Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Miscanthus Production at Farm Scale.

There has been considerable interest in use of miscanthus as a feedstock for bioenergy production due to its potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with cellulosic feedstock production. To date, data on miscanthus production in the US has been based on small scale research plots due to the lack of commercial scale production fields. Research plot yields are often much higher than commercial fields for a variety of reasons including reduced spatial variability and location on better quality farm land. The objective of this study was to quantify the inputs for production of miscanthus at the commercial farm scale. We logged energy use on agricultural machinery from Miscanthus production planted on more than 1000 ha of land and modeled N₂O emissions and changes in soil carbon using DayCent. Although fuel use was higher for land preparation in fields with perennial vegetation, fuel to harvest miscanthus dominated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture machinery for crop management. The N₂O emissions and changes in soil carbon were the largest source and sink of GHG emissions associated with miscanthus production, respectively.