Comment on “Indirect land use change for biofuels: Testing predictions and improving analytical methodologies” by Kim and Dale: statistical reliability and the definition of the indirect land use change (iLUC) issue

"Indirect land use change for biofuels: Testing predictions and improving analytical methodologies" by S. Kim and B. Dale [1], presents a principal inference not supported by its results, that rests on a fundamental conceptual error, and that has no place in the current discussion of biofuels’ climate effects. The paper takes correlation between two variables in a system with many interacting factors to indicate (or contraindicate) causation, and draws a completely incorrect inference from observed sample statistics and their significance levels.     

The GHG balance of biofuels taking into account land use change

The contribution of biofuels to the saving of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has recently been questioned because of emissions resulting from land use change (LUC) for bioenergy feedstock production. We investigate how the inclusion of the carbon effect of LUC into the carbon accounting framework, as scheduled by the European Commission, impacts on land use choices for an expanding biofuel feedstock production. We first illustrate the change in the carbon balances of various biofuels, using methodology and data from the IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. It becomes apparent that the conversion of natural land, apart from grassy savannahs, impedes meeting the EU's 35% minimum emissions reduction target for biofuels. We show that the current accounting method mainly promotes biofuel feedstock production on former cropland, thus increasing the competition between food and fuel production on the currently available cropland area. We further discuss whether it is profitable to use degraded land for commercial bioenergy production as requested by the European Commission to avoid undesirable LUC and conclude that the current regulation provides little incentive to use such land. The exclusive consideration of LUC for bioenergy production minimizes direct LUC at the expense of increasing indirect LUC.     

Promoting biofuels: Implications for developing countries

Interest in biofuels is growing worldwide as concerns about the security of energy supply and climate change are moving into the focus of policy makers. With the exception of bioethanol from Brazil, however, production costs of biofuels are typically much higher than those of fossil fuels. As a result, promotion measures such as tax exemptions or blending quotas are indispensable for ascertaining substantial biofuel demand. With particular focus on developing countries, this paper discusses the economic justification of biofuel promotion instruments and investigates their implications. Based on data from India and Tanzania, we find that substantial biofuel usage induces significant financial costs. Furthermore, acreage availability is a binding natural limitation that could also lead to conflicts with food production. Yet, if carefully implemented under the appropriate conditions, biofuel programs might present opportunities for certain developing countries.     

Scientific analysis is essential to assess biofuel policy effects: In response to the paper by Kim and Dale on “Indirect land-use change for biofuels: Testing predictions and improving analytical methodologies”

Land-use change (LUC) estimated by economic models has sparked intense international debate. Models estimate how much LUC might be induced under prescribed scenarios and rely on assumptions to generate LUC values. It is critical to test and validate underlying assumptions with empirical evidence. Furthermore, this modeling approach cannot answer if any specific indirect effects are actually caused by biofuel policy. The best way to resolve questions of causation is via scientific methods. Kim and Dale attempt to address the question of if, rather than how much, market-induced land-use change is currently detectable based on the analysis of historic evidence, and in doing so, explore some modeling assumptions behind the drivers of change. Given that there is no accepted approach to estimate the global effects of biofuel policy on land-use change, it is critical to assess the actual effects of policies through careful analysis and interpretation of empirical data. Decision makers need a valid scientific basis for policy decisions on energy choices.     

Public attitudes toward political and technological options for biofuels

This paper explores detailed public attitudes regarding the expanding range of biofuels technologies and policy options. Subjects from 34 in-depth focus groups in central Indiana were fairly knowledgeable about biofuels technologies, but uninformed about biofuels policies despite being from a state where biofuels are a salient political issue. A narrow majority was supportive of biofuels in general, but expressed greater enthusiasm about “second generation” biofuels. Subject beliefs about biofuels’ economic and environmental impacts were most important in shaping these opinions, rather than concerns about energy independence or other issues. In terms of policy options, subjects were most supportive of an alternative fuels standard and least supportive of a fixed subsidy and a cap and trade policy. In contrast to arguments about technologies, participants primarily framed their attitudes toward policies in terms of fairness. Although discussion did not substantially change aggregate preferences for most policies, it did increase support significantly for at least one policy proposal—a variable subsidy for ethanol. It is particularly noteworthy that subjects generally did not support the most common biofuel technology—corn-based ethanol—or the most prominent biofuels policy option—the fixed subsidy—despite residing in a state hosting a strong corn industry and staunch political advocates for both positions.     

Public policy and biofuels: The way forward?

The use of biofuels has been given much attention by governments around the world, especially in increasingly energy-hungry OECD nations. Proponents have argued that they offer various advantages over hydrocarbon-based fuels, especially with respect to reducing dependence on OPEC-controlled oil, minimizing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and ensuring financial and lifestyle continuity to farmers and agriculturally dependent communities. This paper adds to the continuing technical debate by addressing the issue from a holistic public policy perspective. In particular, it looks at the proposed benefits of biofuels, yet also addresses the implications of increased demand on the global and regional environment, in addition to the economic welfare of developing nations. Furthermore, it posits that short-term reliance on biofuels vis-à-vis other alternative energy sources may potentially inhibit the development and maturation of longer-term technologies that have greater potential to correct the harmful effects of fossil-fuel dependence. In light of this, the manifold policy instruments currently employed or proposed by governments in developed nations to promote biofuels emerge as questionable.     

Technological change of the energy innovation system: From oil-based to bio-based energy

This paper concerns the structural developments and the direction of technological change of the energy innovation system, based on the studies of Kuhn’s model of scientific change and Schumpeter’s model of technological change. The paper uses the case study of Thai government agencies for understanding the way governments can facilitate technological innovation. The analyses are based on a pre-foresight exercise to examine the potential of the bio-based energy and investigate a set of development policies necessary for the direction of energy system development. The results have shown that bio-based energy is seen as the next new wave for future businesses and one of the solutions to the problem of high oil prices to improve the world’s economic security and sustainable development.     

Novel front end processing method of industrial beet juice extraction for biofuels and bioproducts industries

Conventional raw beet juice extraction in food-grade crystal sugar production is a highly involved and energy intensive process, which includes beets washing, thawing of frozen beets, cossettes slicing, and high temperature denaturation and diffusion. Industrial beets, a new feedstock bred for non-food industrial use, processing for biofuel and bioproducts applications can use less stringent quality requirements and simplify the juice extraction process. A novel simplified front end processing (FEP), which is less expensive, energy efficient, and involved only common equipment (hammer mill and basket press), was developed and tested. The hammer mill pulverized the beets and basket press extracted the juice. Four beet conditions (fresh, frozen, thawed and fresh-frozen) and four presses with water addition were tested for juice extraction. The juice concentration had decreased with the increased number of presses, and the fitted exponential equations (R² ≥ 0.97) determined the juice concentration as a function of number of presses. Frozen beets consistently produced significantly high concentration juice followed by fresh-frozen, thawed, and fresh beets. Freezing had a beneficial effect in increasing the cumulative approximate sugar extracted. Two presses for fresh (92%) and three for frozen (97%) beets extracted the most available sugars. Future research may focus on water temperature, beet particle size, juice for extraction, microbial stability, energy economics, and products utilization. This new FEP efficiently extracts industrial beet juice and has direct scope in industry deployment as well as enhances the potential of the fuel generated being recognized as an advanced biofuel by the renewable fuel standards.     

Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions impacts of the adoption of the EU Directive on biofuels in Spain. Effect of the import of raw materials and land use changes

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions impacts of the use of different alternative biofuels in passenger vehicles in Spain in order to meet EU biofuel goals. Different crop production alternatives are analysed, including the possible import of some raw materials. Availability of land for national production of the raw materials is analysed and indirect land use changes and associated GHG emissions are quantified.There are important differences in GHG emissions of biofuels depending on the raw material used and whether this is domestically produced or imported. Ethanol production using imported cereals and FAME production using domestic rapeseed have the highest GHG emissions per kilometre driven. Fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) production from sunflower has shown the lowest emissions. When taking into account the results of GHG emissions savings per hectare, these findings are somehow reversed. Production of ethanol and around 12% of FAME can be done domestically. The rest will need to be imported and will cause indirect land use change (ILUC). Therefore, ethanol production will not displace any land, whereas FAME production will displace some amounts of land. Calculated ILUC factors are 29%-34%. The additional GHG emissions due to these indirect land use changes are significant (67%-344% of life cycle GHG emissions).Standalone, the EU biofuel targets can have important benefits for Spain in terms of global warming emissions avoided. However, when considering the impact of land use change effects, these benefits are significantly reduced and can even be negative.     

Characterisation of land types and agro-ecological conditions for production of Jatropha as a feedstock for biofuels in Zimbabwe

There is increasing interest in Zimbabwe in developing a biofuels industry based on the production of biodiesel using Jatropha as the main feedstock. This has led to the introduction of Jatropha as a commercial energy crop in the country. There are plans to grow 1220 km² of Jatropha which will supply about 365,000 t of seed. This will provide about 110 dam³ of biodiesel required to achieve a blending level of 10% with petro-diesel. The availability and suitability of land for the production of Jatropha cannot be taken for granted, particularly given the fact that the concept and practice of production of feedstocks for biofuels remain contested on the threat they pose to food security. Determining the land that is potentially available for biofuels is a non-trivial task. A multiplicity of factors needs to be considered. It is important to determine the spatial extent of areas with suitable growth conditions for Jatropha. The interaction of soil type and land use is an important interface in agriculture. Added to this is the need to balance food, fodder and fuel supply in land use planning. This paper attempts to assess the availability and suitability of various land types as well as agro-ecological conditions for the production of Jatropha in Zimbabwe.     

Direct and indirect land use changes issues in European sustainability initiatives: State-of-the-art, open issues and future developments

Facing climate change and growing energy prices, the use of bioenergy is continuously increasing in order to diminish greenhouse gas emissions, secure energy supply and create employment in rural areas. Because the production of biomass or biofuels, wherever it takes place, comes along with externalities, positive or negative, the need for biomass and bioenergy sustainability criteria is more than ever felt. Research on sustainability criteria and certification systems has started through several national and international initiatives. Considering the benefits of an increased use of bioenergy but also the urge for limiting potential negative environmental and socio-economic impacts, the aim of these initiatives was to make the first move regarding bioenergy sustainability, while waiting for the European legislation to regulate this crucial issue. Land use changes, whether direct or indirect, are one of the most important consequences of bioenergy production. While direct land use changes are more easily assessed locally, indirect land use changes exceed the company level and need to be considered at a global scale. Methodologies for dealing with direct and indirect land use changes are proposed among others in the European, Dutch, British and German sustainability initiatives. This paper aims at presenting and comparing those four European initiatives, with a focus on their propositions for direct and indirect land use changes assessment. Key issues are discussed and recommendations are made for steps to overcome identified difficulties in accurately assessing the effects of indirect land use change due to bioenergy production.     

Comparative analysis of environmental impacts of maize-biogas and photovoltaics on a land use basis

This study aims to stimulate the discussion on how to optimize a sustainable energy mix from an environmental perspective and how to apply existing renewable energy sources in the most efficient way. Ground-mounted photovoltaics (PV) and the maize-biogas-electricity route are compared with regard to their potential to mitigate environmental pressure, assuming that a given agricultural area is available for energy production. Existing life cycle assessment (LCA) studies are taken as a basis to analyse environmental impacts of those technologies in relation to conventional technology for power and heat generation. The life-cycle-wide mitigation potential per area used is calculated for the impact categories non-renewable energy input, green house gas (GHG) emissions, acidification and eutrophication. The environmental performance of each system depends on the scenario that is assumed for end energy use (electricity and heat supply have been contemplated). In all scenarios under consideration, PV turns out to be superior to biogas in almost all studied impact categories. Even when maize is used for electricity production in connection with very efficient heat usage, and reduced PV performance is assumed to account for intermittence, PV can still mitigate about four times the amount of green house gas emissions and non-renewable energy input compared to maize-biogas. Soil erosion, which can be entirely avoided with PV, exceeds soil renewal rates roughly 20-fold on maize fields. Regarding the overall Eco-indicator 99 (H) score under most favourable assumptions for the maize-biogas route, PV has still a more than 100% higher potential to mitigate environmental burden. At present, the key advantages of biogas are its price and its availability without intermittence. In the long run, and with respect to more efficient land use, biogas might preferably be produced from organic waste or manure, whereas PV should be integrated into buildings and infrastructures.     

Land use change in a biofuels hotspot: The case of Iowa, USA

This study looks at the land use impact of the biofuels expansion on both the intensive and extensive margin, and its environmental consequences. We link economic, geographical and environmental models by using spatially explicit common units of analysis and use remote sensing crop cover maps and digitized soils data as inputs. Land use changes are predicted via economic analysis of crop rotation choice and tillage under alternative crop prices, and the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model is used to predict corresponding environmental impacts. The study focuses on Iowa, which is the leading biofuels hotspot in the U.S. due to intensive corn production and the high concentration of ethanol plants that comprise 28% of total U.S. production. We consider the impact of the biofuels industry both on current cropland and on land in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a land set-aside program. We find that substantial shifts in rotations favoring continuous corn rotations are likely if high corn prices are sustained. This is consistent with larger scale analyses which show a shift of the current soybean production out of the Corn Belt. We find that sediment losses increase substantially on the intensive margin, while nitrogen losses increase less. Returning CRP land into production has a vastly disproportionate environmental impact, as non-cropped land shows much higher negative marginal environmental effects when brought back to row crop production. This illustrates the importance of differentiating between the intensive and extensive margin when assessing the expansion of biofuel production.     

Environmental assessment of biofuels for transport and the aspects of land use Competition

Early comprehensive life cycle assessments (LCA’s) that compared biofuels with fossil fuels already appeared in the beginning of the eighties. Since then the public, scientific and political interest in biofuels has continuously grown and the number of biofuels and assessed parameters has increased.At the same time, the methodology for this type of assessment has improved with certain aspects of the approach having come up by and by a process which still continues today. Several issues related to the land use currently stand in the centre of expert discussions.     

System expansion for handling co-products in LCA of sugar cane bio-energy systems: GHG consequences of using molasses for ethanol production

This study aims to establish a procedure for handling co-products in life cycle assessment (LCA) of a typical sugar cane system. The procedure is essential for environmental assessment of ethanol from molasses, a co-product of sugar which has long been used mainly for feed. We compare system expansion and two allocation procedures for estimating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of molasses ethanol. As seen from our results, system expansion yields the highest estimate among the three. However, no matter which procedure is used, a significant reduction of emissions from the fuel stage in the abatement scenario, which assumes implementation of substituting bioenergy for fossil-based energy to reduce GHG emissions, combined with a negligible level of emissions from the use stage, keeps the estimate of ethanol life cycle GHG emissions below that of gasoline. Pointing out that indirect land use change (ILUC) is a consequence of diverting molasses from feed to fuel, system expansion is the most adequate method when the purpose of the LCA is to support decision makers in weighing the options and consequences. As shown in the sensitivity analysis, an addition of carbon emissions from ILUC worsens the GHG balance of ethanol, with deforestation being a worst-case scenario where the fuel is no longer a net carbon saver but carbon emitter.     

The Hydropower Potential Assessment Tool (HPAT): Evaluation of run-of-river resource potential for any global land area and application to Falls Creek,Oregon, USA

Small-scale hydropower systems are popular both in the United States and much of the developing world due to the emphasis on renewable energy and the general cost-competitiveness of hydroelectric power generation. We present a novel modeling package, referred to as the Hydropower Potential Assessment Tool (HPAT), to assess historic and projected future small-scale run-of-river hydropower resource potential at a single location or distributed over a study region. HPAT implements a fully-distributed streamflow model, which is coupled to a digital elevation model to assess hydropower resource potential. To demonstrate HPAT, we implement the models for a privately-owned run-of-river facility on Falls Creek outside of Sweet Home, Oregon, USA. We use an ensemble of Global Climate Models (GCMs) for two future climate scenarios to project a plausible range of future changes at this site. For the Falls Creek facility, HPAT projects that the timing of peak streamflow will shift from spring to winter and that mean annual hydropower potential will likely decrease slightly from average 1980–2010 historic conditions through the end of the 21st century. All inputs to HPAT are globally available, except for streamflow observations necessary for calibration.     

Energy conservation and land use planning: A Canadian perspective

This paper describes five energy conservation land use planning strategies for municipal planning, and indicates their usage in Canadian municipalities. The paper is instructive to urban planners, engineers, administrators and others who seek practical information on the energy conservation opportunities of manipulating land use and structural characteristics.     

Imported palm oil for biofuels in the EU: Profitability,greenhouse gas emissions and social welfare effects

We examine the social desirability of renewable diesel production from imported palm oil in the EU when greenhouse gas emissions are taken into account. Using a partial market equilibrium model, we also study the sectoral social welfare effects of a biofuel policy consisting of a blend mandate in a small EU country (Finland), when palm oil based diesel is used to meet the mandated quota for biofuels. We develop a market equilibrium model for three cases: i) no biofuel policy, ii) biofuel policy consisting of socially optimal emission-based biofuel tax credit and iii) actual EU biofuel policy. Our results for the EU biofuel market, Southeast Asia and Finland show very little evidence that a large scale use of imported palm oil in diesel production in the EU can be justified by lower greenhouse gas emission costs. Cuts in emission costs may justify extensive production only if low or negative land-use change emissions result from oil palm cultivation and if the estimated per unit social costs of emissions are high. In contrast, the actual biofuel policies in the EU encourage the production of palm oil based diesel. Our results indicate that the sectoral social welfare effects of the actual biofuel policy in Finland may be negative and that if emissions decrease under actual biofuel policy, the emission abatement costs can be high regardless of the land use change emissions.