Competition for Land in the Global Bioeconomy

Thomas Hertel, Jevgenijs Steinbuks and Uris Lantz C. Baldos

No 129614, 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: The global land use implications of biofuel expansion have received considerable attention in the literature over the past decade. Model-based estimates of the emissions from cropland expansion have been used to assess the environmental impacts of biofuel policies. And integrated assessment models have estimated the potential for biofuels to contribute to greenhouse gas abatement over the coming century. All of these studies feature, explicitly or implicitly, competition between biofuel feed stocks and other land uses. However, the economic mechanisms governing this competition, as well as the contribution of biofuels to global land use change, have not received the close scrutiny that they deserve. The purpose of this paper is to offer a deeper look at these factors. We begin with a comparative static analysis which assesses the impact of exogenously specified forecasts of biofuel expansion over the 2006-2035 period. Global land use change is decomposed according to the three key margins of economic response: extensive supply, intensive supply, and demand. Under the International Energy Agency’s “New Policies” scenario, biofuels account for nearly one-fifth of global land use change over the 2006-2035 period. The paper also offers a comparative dynamic analysis which determines the optimal path for first and second generation biofuels over the course of the entire 21st century. In the absence of GHG regulation, the welfare-maximizing path for global land use allocates 170 Mha to biofuel feed stocks by 2100, with the associated biofuels accounting for about 30% of global liquid fuel consumption. This area expansion is somewhat diminished by expected climate change impacts on agriculture, while it is significantly increased by a moderately aggressive GHG emissions target and by advances in conversion efficiency of second generation biofuels.

Keywords: Biofuels; global land use; partial equilibrium analysis; comparative statics; comparative dynamics; climate change impacts; carbon policies.; Land Economics/Use; Resource/Energy Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/129614/files/HertelEtAl.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Competition for land in the global bioeconomy (2013)
Working Paper: Competition for Land in the Global Bioeconomy (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae12:129614

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.129614

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().