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Land use changes from EU biofuel use: a sensitivity analysis

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Abstract

This paper employs the general equilibrium model MAGNET to assess the effects of the European Commission’s proposals for the revision of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) on land use changes in the European Union and worldwide. The focus of the paper is to evaluate the sensitivity of the land use changes to different assumptions on the blending mix between ethanol and biodiesel for meeting the 5 % blending target of first generation biofuels, on the intensification level of agricultural production and on the available agricultural land. The results suggest that net land use changes (LUC) in the EU due to the revised RED are limited and are more sensitive to the share of ethanol and biodiesel in meeting the blending target compared to different assumptions on the availability of land and of yields that can be achieved when substituting land with other production factors. LUC in the rest of the world stem from increased EU imports of feedstock and of biofuels. LUC is especially sensitive to the substitution between land and fertilizer in regions with extensive agricultural production systems. In regions trading vegetable oil and oilseeds with the EU, and in regions producing ethanol, LUC is influenced by the share of ethanol in the biofuel mix used in the EU.

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Notes

  1. Using a general equilibrium model, where all markets are cleared simultaneously, does not allow to address separately ILUC and DLUC effects, but instead helps to understand net land use changes.

  2. A broader comparison of supply side specifications between partial and general equilibrium models is given in Robinson et al. (2014).

  3. Note that land demand does not have to equal area harvested. The ratio between harvested area and crop area is a measurement to indicate the intensity of a cropping system. The ratio is higher than 1 in case more crops per year are grown on the same ha, or for example two times for rice (which is quite normal in tropical countries). The ratio is lower in case part of the crop area has been left fallow or in case crops can only be harvested once in two or three years.

  4. To note, according to the EU Regulation 1237/2007 sugar beet production for biofuel use can be out-of-quota since the production quota is on raw and white sugar.

  5. A back-of-the-envelope calculation allows estimation of ELUC by taking into account the conversion efficiency of biofuel feedstock to the energy of biofuels, crop yields and the percentage of land saved when biofuel by-products (such as DDGS) are used as animal feed (the latter based on Ros 2010). This calculation suggests that ELUC can vary between 250 ha/ktoe and about 850 ha/ktoe depending on the mix of crops used as biofuel feedstock.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Corjan Brink and Anne Gerdien Prins of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency for providing input data on land supply. Work for this paper has been partially funded by the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment of the Netherlands/The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

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Correspondence to Aikaterini Kavallari.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6 and 7.

Table 6 Regional aggregation
Table 7 Commodity aggregation

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Kavallari, A., Smeets, E. & Tabeau, A. Land use changes from EU biofuel use: a sensitivity analysis. Oper Res Int J 14, 261–281 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-014-0155-8

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