Manitoba Biofuels Project
This research project, conducted with Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives and the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute, involved a review of the characteristics of selected feedstocks and bioproducts, the development of a method for evaluating climate change impacts on crop production in Manitoba and a methodology for carrying out life-cycle assessments of bioproducts for the Manitoba context. The overall goal of these methodologies is to identify bioproducts with the greatest environmental benefits—the products that contribute most to climate change mitigation, but which are also adapted to predicted changes in Manitoba's climate.
The overall conclusion of the research is that future work should be focused to adapt the agricultural sector to climate change and take advantage of the rapidly expanding bioproducts industry. Local-scale estimates of climate change impacts on biomass production should be obtained based on climate change scenarios and general circulation models. The life-cycle assessment methodology presented in this report illustrates not only the environmental consequences (positive and negative), but also the adaptive potential of these systems relative to climate change. Growing switchgrass, a native grass that can be used to produce ethanol, for instance, can improve biodiversity and help improve the resilience of ecosystem services that might otherwise be irreparably damaged by climate change. Current work on biofuels involves assessing ecosystem service attributes for compatibility with integrated watershed management and planning.
