Potential Land Use Implications of a Global Biofuels Industry

By Angelo C. Gurgel, J. Reilly, S. Paltsev. 2007

257 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper we investigate the potential production and implications of a global biofuels industry. We develop alternative approaches to consistently introduce land as an economic factor input and in physical terms into a computable general equilibrium framework. The approach allows us to parameterize biomass production consistent with agro-engineering information on yields and a "second generation" cellulosic biomass conversion technology. We explicitly model land conversion from natural areas to agricultural use in two different ways: in one approach we introduced a land supply elasticity based on observed land supply responses and in the other approach we considered only the direct cost of conversion. We estimate biofuels production at the end of the century could reach 221 to 267 EJ in a reference scenario and 319 to 368 EJ under a global effort to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The version with the land supply elasticity allowed much less conversion of land from natural areas, forcing intensification of production, especially on pasture and grazing land, whereas the pure conversion cost model led to significant deforestation. These different approaches emphasize the importance of somehow reflecting the non-market value of land more fully in the conversion decision. The observed land conversion response we estimate may be a short turn response that does not fully reflect the effect of long run pressure to convert land if rent differentials are sustained over 100 years.

Subfields: Agronomy and Crop Science, Biomedical Engineering, Environmental Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/02e4e828451de4c149cbb11a2174751721f7487c

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Citations in the corpus

Global land-use implications of first and second generation biofuel targets (2011, background): “, 2008), or enter into direct competition with conventional agricultural production (Field et al., 2008; Gurgel et al., 2007) and other services.”
Climate adaptation as mitigation: the case of agricultural investments (2013, unknown): “08 [41, 42]”
The impacts of biofuel targets on land-use change and food supply: a global CGE assessment (2010, unknown): “11 Gurgel et al. (2007) use the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model to analyze an expansion of second-generation biofuel based on biomass production.”
Global food waste across the income spectrum: Implications for food prices, production and resource use (2020, background): “The growth in global biofuel consumption is from the document published in the World Energy Outlook (IEA, 2008, 2012) (shocks are reported in Appendix E Table A1. See Annex 1 for details; Ahmed et al., 2009; Gurgel et al., 2007; Harrison et al., 2000; Harrison and Pearson, 1996; Taheripour et al., 2”
Integrating Bioenergy into Computable General Equilibrium Models – A Survey (2010, methodology): “The input factor 'land' is specified further in a follow-up study by Gurgel et al. (2007) that includes various land types and the possibility of conversion from one type to another as outlined in section 3.1 above.”