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The limits of bioenergy for mitigating global life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels

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Abstract

The size of the global bioenergy resource has been studied extensively; however, the corresponding life-cycle greenhouse gas benefit of bioenergy remains largely unexplored at the global scale. Here we quantify the optimal use of global bioenergy resources to offset fossil fuels in 2050. We find that bioenergy could reduce life-cycle emissions from fossil fuel-derived electricity and heat, and liquid fuels, by a maximum of 4.9–38.7 Gt CO2e, or 9–68%, and that offsetting electricity and heat with bioenergy is on average 1.6–3.9 times more effective for emissions mitigation than offsetting liquid fuels. At the same time, liquid fuels make up 18–49% of the optimal allocation of bioenergy in our results for 2050, indicating that a mix of bioenergy end-uses maximizes life-cycle emissions reductions. Finally, emissions reductions are maximized by limiting deployment of total available primary bioenergy to 29–91% in our analysis, demonstrating that life-cycle emissions are a constraint on the usefulness of bioenergy for mitigating global climate change.

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Figure 1: Availability and specific LC GHG emissions of optimally allocated final bioenergy compared with fossil fuel-derived final energy demand and emissions in 2050.
Figure 2: Deployment of biomass-derived final energy versus cumulative GHG emissions mitigation.
Figure 3: Deployment of biomass-derived final energy versus payback period for LUC emissions.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support for this work was provided in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), application number PGSD3-454375-2014, and in part by the Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSERC or the Martin Family Society. The authors wish to acknowledge W. Tyner of Purdue University for his assistance with the GTAP AEZ-EF database, and J. Hileman and D. Williams of the US Federal Aviation Administration for their comments on this work.

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  1. Robert Malina

    Present address: † Present address: Center for Environmental Sciences, Hasselt University, Campus Diepenbeek, Agoralaan Building D, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

    Mark D. Staples, Robert Malina & Steven R. H. Barrett

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  1. Mark D. Staples
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All three authors contributed equally to the conception and design of this work, interpretation of the results, and editing of the text. M.D.S. performed the analysis and drafted the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Steven R. H. Barrett.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–33, Supplementary Tables 1–18, Supplementary Notes 1–11 and Supplementary References. (PDF 1648 kb)

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Staples, M., Malina, R. & Barrett, S. The limits of bioenergy for mitigating global life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. Nat Energy 2, 16202 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2016.202

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