Additional CO2 emissions from land use change — Forest conservation as a precondition for sustainable production of second generation bioenergy

Alexander Popp, Michael Krause, Jan Philipp Dietrich, Hermann Lotze-Campen, Marian Leimbach, Tim Beringer and Nico Bauer

Ecological Economics, 2012, vol. 74, issue C, 64-70

Abstract: In the past, deforestation, mainly driven by the conversion of natural forests to agricultural land, contributed up to one-fifth of global human induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Substitution of bioenergy for fossil energy is an intensely discussed option for mitigating CO2 emissions. This paper, by applying a global land-use model and a global energy–economy–climate model, explores how demand for cellulosic bioenergy crops will add an additional pressure on the land system in the future. In accordance with other studies, we find that CO2 emissions from land use change due to energy crop production will be an important factor in the GHG balance of bioenergy if natural forests will not be protected. But restricting land availability for biomass plantations by conserving natural forests requires additional efforts in the agricultural sector: First, our simulation results indicate that significant additional crop yield increases will be needed due to the combination of forest conservation and the cultivation of dedicated bioenergy crops. Secondly, our simulation results show that forest conservation in combination with increasing demand for dedicated bioenergy crops will lead to higher agricultural production costs of approximately 20%.

Keywords: Bioenergy; Land use change; Deforestation; Yield increases; Costs of agricultural production; Indirect land use change emissions (iLUC) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180091100485X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:ecolec:v:74:y:2012:i:c:p:64-70

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.11.004

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().