The effect of bioenergy expansion: Food, energy, and environment
By József Popp, Z. Lakner, Mónika Harangi-Rákos, M. Fári. 2014
849 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The increasing prices and environmental impacts of fossil fuels have made the production of biofuels to reach unprecedented volumes over the last 15 years. Given the increasing land requirement for biofuel production, the assessment of the impacts that extensive biofuel production may cause to food supply and to the environment has considerable importance. Agriculture faces some major inter-connected challenges in delivering food security at a time of increasing pressures from population growth, changing consumption patterns and dietary preferences, and post-harvest losses. At the same time, there are growing opportunities and demands for the use of biomass to provide additional renewables, energy for heat, power and fuel, pharmaceuticals and green chemical feedstocks. Biomass from cellulosic bioenergy crops is expected to play a substantial role in future energy systems. However, the worldwide potential of bioenergy is limited, because all land is multi-functional and land is also needed for food, feed, timber, and fiber production, and for nature conservation and climate protection. Furthermore, the potential of bioenergy for climate change mitigation remains unclear due to large uncertainties about future agricultural yield improvements and land availability for biomass plantations. Large-scale cultivation of dedicated biomass is likely to affect bioenergy potentials, global food prices and water scarcity. Therefore, integrated policies for energy, land use and water management are needed. As biomass contains all the elements found in fossil resources, albeit in different combinations, therefore present and developing technologies can lead to a future based on renewable, sustainable and low carbon economies. This article presents [1] risks to food and energy security [2] estimates of bioenergy potential with regard to biofuel production, and [3] the challenges of the environmental impact.
Subfields: Agronomy and Crop Science, Biomedical Engineering, Pollution
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/467da42573e1d57c3ca934e50ed63d5278043467
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Citations in the corpus
- Transportation fuels from biomass fast pyrolysis, catalytic hydrodeoxygenation, and catalytic fast hydropyrolysis (2018, background): “10 global energy demand [12], and it is important to stress that the future energy supply system is most likely to be based on several synergetic technologies, which can complement each other, for example in order to fill the gap in the duck-curve.”
- The Challenge of Feeding the World (2019, background): “Therefore, the volatility of energy markets might have a significant direct impact on food prices and an indirect impact on the security of food supply [7].”
- THE ROLE OF BIOFUELS IN FOOD COMMODITY PRICES VOLATILITY AND LAND USE (2017, background): “Biofuels used in transportation has spurred the development of bioenergy (Popp et al., 2014).”
- Biochar as a Multifunctional Component of the Environment—A Review (2019, neutral): “Biomass material can be partially wet or dry, homogeneous or heterogeneous, of high density or of a loose structure, low or high ash content, high or low fragmentation [45].”
- Reducing industrial energy demand in the UK: A review of energy efficiency technologies and energy saving potential in selected sectors (2018, background): “The use of crops for bioenergy generation raises the issue of food security as they are cultivated on soil that would otherwise be used for crops for food production [158].”