ABSTRACT
The demand for renewable bioenergy is increasing for future energy supply due to the increasing population, limited reserves of fossil fuel, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change. Biomass and bioenergy crops can produce heat, electricity, gaseous, solid, and liquid fuels, which increase national energy security, rural socio-economic development, and sustainable development. The climate change affects the agricultural production of corn and other crops, and is driving the farmers to replace corn with second-generation energy crops for energy production. In some parts of the world, the bioenergy crop yields might increase due to climate change and technological development, while in other areas the negative effect of climate change will be mitigated by the technological development. Conventional grain and oilseed crops and crop residues, perennial herbaceous and woody crops, perennial oilseed crops, halophytes, and algae, among others, are candidate bioenergy crops expected to combat global climate change. Switchgrass has high potential as a bioenergy feedstock. The bioenergy-related land-use change and their costs and benefits must include potential impacts on the surface energy and water balance to comprehensively address important concerns for local, regional, and global climate change. The production of bioenergy has potential impacts on energy and food security, climate change mitigation, water use patterns, maintenance of biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emission changes through direct or indirect land-use change and by means of life cycle analysis. The global climate change can be mitigated and nutrient availability to plants can be increased by enhanced weathering in agricultural soils through applying crushed silicate rock as a soil amendment, while the perennial crops are more effective than annuals at weathering. The effect of global climate change can be mitigated by reduction in deforestation and degradation of forests, enhancing afforestation and reforestation, maintaining high carbon density in forests, and increasing the use of forest-based materials and energy replacing fossil-intensive materials and energy. However, the bioenergy crops planted widely can have some adverse environmental impacts due to release of biogenic volatile organic compounds.
