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This paper is the summation of several analyses to assess the size and benefits of a Billion Ton Bioeconomy, a vision to enable a sustainable market for producing and converting a billion tons of US biomass to bio-based energy, fuels, and products by 2030. Two alternative biomass availability scenarios in 2030, defined as the (i) Business-as-usual (598 million dry tons) and (ii) Billion Ton (1042 million dry tons), establish a range of possible outcomes for the future bioeconomy. The biomass utilized in the current (2014) (365 million dry tons) economy is estimated to displace approximately 2.4% of fossil energy consumption and avoid 116 million tons of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) emissions, whereas the Billion Ton bioeconomy of 2030 could displace 9.5% of fossil energy consumption and avoid as much as 446 million tons of CO2 equivalent emissions annually. Developing the integrated systems, supply chains, and infrastructure to efficiently grow, harvest, transport, and convert large quantities of biomass in a sustainable way could support the transition to a low-carbon economy. Bio-based activities in the current (2014) economy are estimated to have directly generated more than $48 billion in revenue and 285 000 jobs. Our estimates show that developing biomass resources and addressing current limitations to achieve a Billion Ton bioeconomy could expand direct bioeconomy revenue by a factor of 5 to contribute nearly $259 billion and 1.1 million jobs to the US economy by 2030. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

The 2012 Sun Grant National Conference on Science for Biomass Feedstock Production and Utilization was held on 2–5 October 2012, in New Orleans, LA, USA. The Sun Grant Initiative set out to highlight recent advances in science and technology contributing to the deployment of conventional and advanced biofuels and bioproducts from agricultural and forest systems. The Initiative, with sponsorship from the Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), assembled an agenda focusing on promoting collaboration between academic, industry, non-profit, and government partners. This special issue is comprised of a small sample of conference presentations selected to reflect important research progress and to highlight the range of issues that must be considered as the transition to biomass energy takes hold.

In the 15 western states there are at least 28 million acres of forest that could benefit from some type of mechanical treatment to reduce hazardous fuel loading. It is estimated that about 60 percent of this area could be operationally accessible for treatment with a total biomass treatment volume of 345 million bone dry tons (bdt). Two-thirds of this forest area is on public lands. Most of the volume is in trees 6 inches diameter and greater that have conventional utilization opportunities. Transportation cost and distance to markets, however, may preclude actual recovery. Treatment costs are increased by the need to treat large numbers of low-volume stems less than 4 inches in diameter. Gross costs can range from $35 to over $1000 per acre depending on type of operation, terrain, and number of trees to be treated. Some areas will likely be prohibitively expensive to treat, although cost estimates presented here may be high because they are based on the use of conventional timber harvesting systems applied to small diameter treatments. Implementation of any significant fuel reduction effort will generate large volumes of biomass and require the development of additional workforce and operations capacity in western forests.