USDA’s Renewable Energy Tool is a web based tool that is a work in progress. The vision of the Tool is to identify “renewable energy opportunities” by providing stakeholders access to agro-, economic, socio-, and technical data and information resources that are relevant to the evaluation of potential opportunities. These opportunities are anticipated to range across the entire supply chain: from feedstock production, to bioenergy production, bioenergy use, and linkages between feedstock production, bioenergy production and use. Types of data and information that will be available will include but not be limited to: land use for producing biomass and energy crops, cost to produce crops and biomass crops, competition for biomass, blending terminals, fuel stations, state and federal policy, USDA guidelines for and financial assistance, and state and federal office locations for agriculture, energy, environmental protection, and conservation. Initially the focus is transportation fuels.
