Biofuels and Climate Change Mitigation: A CGE Analysis Incorporating Land-Use Change
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Abstract
The question of whether or not biofuels help mitigate climate change has attracted much debate in the literature. Using a global computable general equilibrium model that explicitly represents land-use change impacts due to the expansion of biofuels, our study attempts to shed some light on this question. Our study shows that if biofuel mandates and targets currently announced by more than 40 countries around the world are implemented by 2020 using crop feedstocks and if both forests and pasture lands are used to meet the new land demands for biofuel expansion, this would cause net release of GHG emissions to the atmosphere until 2043 as the GHG emissions released through land-use change exceeds the reduction of emissions due to replacement of gasoline and diesel. On the other hand, if the use of forest lands is avoided by channeling only pasture lands to meet the demand for new lands, the net release of GHG emissions would cease by 2021, a year after the full implementation of the mandates and targets.
Keywords
Biofuels Climate change mitigation Computable general equilibrium analysis Deforestation Land-use changeAbbreviations
- AEEI
Autonomous energy efficiency improvement
- AEZ
Agro-ecological zone
- AT
Announced targets
- CDE
Constant difference of elasticities
- CES
Constant elasticity of substitution
- CET
Constant elasticity of transformation
- CGE
Computable general equilibrium
- CO2
Carbon dioxide
- ECA
Eastern Europe and Central Asia
- EAP
East Asia and Pacific
- EFTA
European Free Trade Association
- ET
Enhanced targets
- EU
European Union
- GDP
Gross domestic product
- GHG
Greenhouse gases
- GTAP
Global trade analysis project
- IPCC
Intergovernmental panel on climate change
- LAC
Latin America and Caribbean
- MENA
Middle East and North Africa
- ND
Non-energy intermediate demand
- SA
South Asia
- SAM
Social accounting matrix
- SSA
Sub-Saharan Africa
- UK
United Kingdom
- US
United States
- VAE
Value added and energy
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