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Abstract
Carinata (Brassica Carinata) is a promising crop for producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in the Southern United States. However, a lot of information on the adoption of carinata as a feedstock for SAF production is missing. Similarly, information about the cost-effectiveness and environmental feasibility of carinata-based SAF across the supply chain is still unknown. In this context, this study explored the adoption challenges of carinata as a newly introduced bioenergy crop using a spatially explicit agent-based model (ABM), and then estimated the production cost and intensity of greenhouse gas emission of carinata-based SAF production with deterministic and 12 multiperiod stochastic supply chain models. The ABM assumed the principles of profit maximization, neighborhood influences, risk aversion behavior of farmers, followed by three estimation procedures - a) the profitability difference between traditional crop rotations (with and without carinata at different contract prices), b) the adoption rate of neighboring farmers, and c) their land allocation decisions from managing a risky portfolio of enterprises. The deterministic supply chain model was developed with a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming approach integrated with the Geographical Information System and Life Cycle Analysis for a 20 years simulation period along with four annual seasons for continuous seed supply purposes. The stochastic models were the extension of the supply chain configuration of the deterministic model, where models were run for four different simulation periods (5, 10, 15, 20-years) with three probabilistic scenarios (99%, 95%, and 90% confidence interval). The supply chain models determined the locations of farms and facilities (e.g., storage units, crushing mills, biorefineries) by minimizing the overall cost of the systems. The ABM results showed that the proportion of land allocated to carinata to the total farmland under field crops were 38% and 85% after 33 years under the low (2.5%) and high (5%) initial neighborhood adoption rates, respectively, with a contract price of $13/bushel. The minimum price of SAF, estimated from supply chain models, ranged between $1.14-1.86 L-1 while achieving 63-65% carbon saving in any scenarios compared with conventional aviation fuel. The multi-scale spatial and temporal modeling frameworks developed as a part of this dissertation could aid the development of the bioenergy landscape in Georgia and beyond.