Understanding Community Impacts: A Tool for Evaluating Externalities from Local Bio-Fuels Production

The popularity of public investment in local bio-fuels production as a rural development initiative is growing. An important consideration in determining the level of public support for a plant's development, however, is accurately measuring public externalities resulting from plant activity. The purpose of this research was to first develop a set of community multipliers associated with various bio-fuel plant configurations, and then develop an easy to use tool that allows local communities to measure potential benefits based on varying levels of plant activity.