Land demand for ethanol production

Manoel Regis L.V. Leal, Luiz A. Horta Nogueira and Luis A.B. Cortez

Applied Energy, 2013, vol. 102, issue C, 266-271

Abstract: Several key indicators of the sustainability of biofuels are related to the land used to produce the feedstock. Most of the agronomic costs and energy use (fertilizers, herbicides, soil preparation, and harvesting) are more related to the cropped area than to the feedstock quantity produced; this is also the case of soil greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (CO2 and N2O) and land use change (LUC) impacts, both direct (dLUC) and indirect (iLUC), socio-economic impacts (land tenure, land prices and traditional crop displacement), impacts on biodiversity and on the environment (soil, water and air). Today, biofuels use only a little more than 2% of the world arable land but if their use to displace fossil fuels increases, as indicated by some low carbon scenarios, the land demand for the production of feedstocks could become a constraint to the expansion. It is quite apparent that the biofuel yields, present and future, should be one of the main characteristics to be evaluated in the initial screening process. This work uses the cases of corn and sugarcane ethanol to draw some comparisons on the use of these biofuels to meet the targets of some of the International Energy Agency (IEA) biofuel use scenarios in terms of land demand and also will use some of the most important study results concerning the GHG emission reduction potential, including LUC and iLUC impacts, when meeting the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) of the European Union (EU) and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) of the USA. Some technology improvements will be considered including the integration of first and second generation technologies in the same site processing corn or sugarcane for ethanol.

Keywords: Sugarcane; Corn; Ethanol; Land demand; Biofuels; GHG emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2012.09.037

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