Sustainability of Bioenergy Systems: Cradle to Grave Workshop Report, September 10-11, 2009

A Workshop for Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and their collaborators was held on September 10-11, 2009 at ORNL. The informal workshop focused on “Sustainability of Bioenergy Systems: Cradle to Grave.” The topics covered included sustainability issues associated with feedstock production and transport, production of biofuels and by-products, and delivery and consumption by the end users. The workshop had two overall goals, to share information about their activities in this area and to identify immediate and long-term needs and opportunities for collaboration.  The workshop also created opportunities to present key issues of bioenergy sustainability and discuss work that is ongoing to address these issues; to develop a systems perspective on bioenergy sustainability
and to identify questions that lead toward a workable definition of bioenergy sustainability.