In addition to sugar-derived microbial oil, another strategy for improving oil production is through the engineering of highly productive C4 crops (e.g., sugarcane, sweet sorghum) to accumulate vegetative oil within plant tissue. Because oleaginous yeast is limited by a maximum theoretical yield of 0.32 g•g -1 TAG from glucose, diverting carbon flux away from plant sugars directly towards oil accumulation may result in greater oil yields per hectare. Recent studies have reported on the creation of oilcane ─ a sugarcane carrying transgenic alleles designed to accumulate TAG in the vegetative tissues ─ that have been demonstrated to achieve up to 4.3 dw % TAG in the stems and 8.0 dw % TAG in the leaves (a total of 5.2 dw % TAG). A detailed TEA suggests that biorefineries could be willing to pay 3.24 [-3.91, 16.42] and 11.7 [-1.9, 32.2] USD•MT -1 more for oilcane than sugarcane with and without conversion of cellulosic biomass to ethanol, respectively. However, oilcane lines with higher oil content have demonstrated lower biomass yields, possibly due to the accumulation of cytotoxic free fatty acids (FFA), which constitute 10 wt % of the total oil. For example, oilcane lines 1566 and 1580, with stem TAG contents of 1.8% and 5.4 dw %, have dry biomass yields of 69% and 19% relative to traditional sugarcane, respectively. Although oilcane may have a greater value than sugarcane per unit mass, trade-offs in biomass yield may undercut the financial viability of oilcane cultivation.