Indirect land use change and biofuels. Mathematical analysis reveals a fundamental flaw in the regulatory approach
| Autor: | Adisa Azapagic, Bruce E. Dale, Reinout Heijungs, Seungdo Kim, Tom Darlington Darlington, Dennis Kahlbaum Kahlbaum |
|---|---|
| Přispěvatelé: | Econometrics and Operations Research, Spatial Economics |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
Corn ethanol
Renewable Energy Sustainability and the Environment business.industry Partial equilibrium Renewable Fuel Standard Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 Forestry Environmental economics Agricultural economics Renewable energy Biofuel Economics Economic model Land use land-use change and forestry SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy business Waste Management and Disposal Agronomy and Crop Science |
| Zdroj: | Kim, S, Dale, B E, Heijungs, R, Azapagic, A, Darlington, T & Kahlbaum, D 2014, ' Indirect land use change and biofuels. Mathematical analysis reveals a fundamental flaw in the regulatory approach ', Biomass and Bioenergy, vol. 71, no. December, pp. 408-412 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2014.09.015 Biomass and Bioenergy, 71(December), 408-412. Elsevier Limited |
| ISSN: | 0961-9534 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.biombioe.2014.09.015 |
| Popis: | In the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) program, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) has used partial equilibrium models to estimate the overall indirect land use change (iLUC) associated with the biofuel scenario mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). For regulatory purposes, the U.S. EPA “shocks” (changes) the amount of each biofuel in the economic models one at a time to estimate the threshold values for specific biofuels (single-shock analysis). The primary assumption in the single-shock analysis is that iLUC is a linear process with respect to biofuels, i.e., that interactions between different biofuels are trivially small. However, the assumption of linearity in the single-shock analysis is not appropriate for estimating the threshold values for specific biofuels when the interactions between different biofuels are not small. Numerical results from the RFS2 program show that the effects of interactions between different biofuels are too large to be ignored. Thus, the threshold values for specific biofuels determined by the U.S. EPA are scenario-dependent and value choice-driven. They do not reflect real impacts of specific biofuels. Using scenario-dependent values for regulation is arbitrary and inappropriate. Failure to deal appropriately with interactions between different biofuels when assigning iLUC values to specific biofuels is a mathematical and systematic flaw; it is not an “uncertainty” issue. The U.S. EPA should find better ways to differentiate the contribution of one biofuel versus another when assigning iLUC values or find better means of regulating the land use change impact of biofuel production. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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