climate change and health costs of air emissions from biofuels.pdf

Climate change and health costs of air emissionsfrom biofuels and gasolineJason Hilla,b,1, Stephen Polaskya,b, Erik Nelsonc, David Tilmanb,1, Hong Huod, Lindsay Ludwige, James Neumanne,Haochi Zhenga, and Diego BontaaDepartment of Applied Economics,Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108;Department of Biologyand Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL60439; andIndustrial Economics, Cambridge, MA 02140Contributed by David Tilman, December 16, 2008 (sent for review August 14, 2008)Environmental impacts of energy use can impose large costs onsociety. We quantify and ize the life-cycle climate-changeand health effects of greenhouse gas (GHG) and ?ne particulatematter () emissions from gasoline, corn ethanol, andcellulosicethanol. For each billion ethanol-equivalent gallons of fuel pro-duced busted in the US, bined climate-change andhealth costs are $469 million for gasoline, $472–952 million for hanol depending on biore?nery heat source (natural gas, cornstover, or coal) and technology, but only $123–208 million forcellulosic ethanol depending on feedstock (prairie biomass,Mis-canthus, corn stover, or switchgrass). Moreover, a geographicallyexplicit life-cycle analysis that tracks and exposurerelative t