2013 feedstock supply and price projections and sensitivity analysis

Farmgate prices (i.e. price delivered roadside ready for loading and transport) for biomass feedstocks directly influence biofuel prices. Using the latest available data, marginal (i.e. price for the last ton) farmgate prices of $51, $63, and $67 dry ton^-1 ($2011) are projected as necessary to provide 21 billion gallons of biofuels from about 250 million dry tons of terrestrial feedstocks in 2022 under price-run deterministic, demand-run deterministic, and stochastic simulations, respectively.Sources of uncertainty in these feedstock supply and price projections include conversion efficiency, global market impacts on crop price projections, crop yields, no-till adoption, and climate.Under a set of low, high, and reference assumptions, these variables introduce an average of +/- $11 dry ton^-1 (~15%) uncertainty of feedstock prices needed to meet EISA targets of 21 billion gallons of biofuels produced with 250 million dry tons of biomass in 2022.Market uncertainty justifies the need for fairly frequent (i.e. annual or biennial) re-assessment of feedstock price projections to inform strategies toward commercialization of biofuels.