Successful commercialization of bioenergy crop systems for power, fuel, and chemicals requires feedstock prices and conversion costs to be economically competitive with conventional energy sources. Additionally, the feedstock price offered to farmers must be sufficiently high to ensure profits comparable to those a farmer could earn using the land for other purposes. Although energy crops can be produced in other regions, the regions selected correspond to the production regions for major U.S. agricultural crops. Users can choose among three tillage practices and can alter the rotation length and spacing for hybrid poplar and the rotation length for switchgrass. Land rental rate, expected yield, and the discount rate can also be varied.
Users can also override the estimated harvesting costs.
Some users many not need a full economic cost estimate for all applications. In this manner, costs relevant to the situation under analysis can be estimated. This facilitates comparison of bioenergy crop economics with those of conventional agricultural crops. Because of the perennial nature of bioenergy crops, production costs are estimated for each year in the life of the planting, as well as a net present value per acre and per ton cost over the lifetime of the planting. The model uses machinery and equipment engineering specifications to estimate the number of hours needed by each machine to cover one acre of land.