However, the 229-page report, which updates a previous 2005 study, undertakes a county-by-county inventory of potentially available primary biomass feedstocks and analyses the sustainability of those feedstocks. It concludes the US can support the continued expansion of the bioenergy sector.
"The baseline scenario in the newly released report shows that biomass resources could be increased from a current 473 million dry tonnes annually to nearly 1.1 billion dry tonnes by 2030, under a conservative set of assumptions about future increases in crop yield," the Department of Energy said in a statement.
The report, entitled US Billion-Ton Update 2011, also predicts that improvements in biofuel technologies could allow for the production of around 85 billion gallons of biofuels a year – enough to replace approximately 30 per cent of the nation's current petroleum consumption.
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