Clustering of biorefineries for land use change analysis

The presentation describes the methodology and results for clustering 187 biorefineries into 13 representative clusters. The problem is that detailed geographic analysis with photographic ground truthing can only be conducted on ~15 biorefineries within the project scope. How do we select the subset of 15 biorefineries among the ~200 nationally to assess? The solution is to use multivariate clustering to ensure the subset of ~15 biorefineries are statistically representative of all biorefineries in the U.S.

Impact/Purpose

The purpose of the presentation is to give an overview to OTAQ and other stakeholder groups on the land use change analysis to date. My portion specifically focuses on the method for selecting biorefineries to be representative of all biorefineries in the U.S. This is in support of the OTAQ Reset Rule and the Third Triennial Report to Congress on Biofuels.

Citation

Clark, C., K. Copenhaver, S. Mueller, AND J. Dunn. Clustering of biorefineries for land use change analysis. Local Project Meeting at EPA, Washington, DC, March 11, 2019.