Monthly wind electricity production, solar electricity production and electricity demand as a percentage of the annual totals for each J Elliott Campbell David B Lobell Robert C Genova Andrew Zumkehr Christopher B Field 10.6084/m9.figshare.1011711.v1 https://iop.figshare.com/articles/figure/_Monthly_wind_electricity_production_solar_electricity_production_and_electricity_demand_as_a_percen/1011711 <p><strong>Figure 5.</strong> Monthly wind electricity production, solar electricity production and electricity demand as a percentage of the annual totals for each. Seasonal energy profiles for states within the (a) Western electric grid, (b) Eastern electric grid and (c) ERCOT (Texas) electric grid.</p> <p><strong>Abstract</strong></p> <p>Bioenergy has the unique potential to provide a dispatchable and carbon-negative component to renewable energy portfolios. However, the sustainability, spatial distribution, and capacity for bioenergy are critically dependent on highly uncertain land-use impacts of biomass agriculture. Biomass cultivation on abandoned agriculture lands is thought to reduce land-use impacts relative to biomass production on currently used croplands. While coarse global estimates of abandoned agriculture lands have been used for large-scale bioenergy assessments, more practical technological and policy applications will require regional, high-resolution information on land availability. Here, we present US county-level estimates of the magnitude and distribution of abandoned cropland and potential bioenergy production on this land using remote sensing data, agriculture inventories, and land-use modeling. These abandoned land estimates are 61% larger than previous estimates for the US, mainly due to the coarse resolution of data applied in previous studies. We apply the land availability results to consider the capacity of biomass electricity to meet the seasonal energy storage requirement in a national energy system that is dominated by wind and solar electricity production. Bioenergy from abandoned croplands can supply most of the seasonal storage needs for a range of energy production scenarios, regions, and biomass yield estimates. These data provide the basis for further down-scaling using models of spatially gridded land-use areas as well as a range of applications for the exploration of bioenergy sustainability.</p> 2013-07-10 00:00:00 energy storage requirement agriculture lands energy production scenarios land availability results ercot Seasonal energy profiles bioenergy grid electricity production biomas cropland data Environmental Science