Plenary session wrap up:

1

• Plenary session wrap up
• Modelling Global Land Use and Social Implications
  in the Sustainability Assessment of Biofuels
• - what are the questions?
• By Professor Roland Clift
• University of Surrey, UK

2
Problem setting

• What are the major problems and challenges faced
  by human societies from a large scale use of
  crops for bioenergy?
• Objectives
• More use of solar energy
• Maximize energy yield per ha
• Maximize carbon offset per ha
• Challenges
• Sustainability Economic, social and ecological
• Multiple interrelated objectives
• Local and global priorities

3
Boundary conditions

• To what degree will future biofuels/energy crop
  derive from agricultural residues, growing of
  energy crops in agriculture, forestry, municipal
  waste or other?
• Sources must be matched to uses and processes
• Local and regional differences
• How much land will/can realistically be allocated
  to biofuel production in the future?
• What is the constraints on land use?
• Will demand lead to significant intensification
  of production
• Analysis cannot be left to one single
  disciplinary approach
• Nor can it be left to a liberalised global marked

4
Boundary conditions

• Competition between energy and food security
• Drivers and barriers for land use change
• Economic, cultural and social
• Depends on geographical region, market structure
  and details of cultivation and processing but
  in what ways?
• Transportation biofuels vs. heat vs. power vs.
  material use
• Energy yields and carbon offsets depend on use of
  co-products
• Blends vs. single fuels (e.g. ethanol/water
  azeotrope)
• Need to be realistic about supply and use
  systems
• At what oil price can biofuels compete on market
  terms?
• Compete with what? E.g. Coal-to-liquids

5
Boundary conditions

• What are the economic conditions and constraints
  for energy crops? What is the need for subsidies,
  tax exemptions and/or other incentives now and in
  the future to promote the use of energy crops on
  the fuel market?
• How to avoid perverse incentives?
• lock in to sub-optimal systems
• Do we have an issue of cost/benefit (of e.g. CO2
  reduction) and prioritisation in our use of
  biomass and money to support its use? How does it
  affect the way we model and assess environmental
  aspects of biofuels?
• Needs a transdisciplinary perspective no single
  approach can address this

6
Life Cycle Modeling

• What are the key contributions from the
  discipline of LCA of common value to the
  modelling of land use consequences of biofuels?
• Assessment of energy yields (per ha) carbon
  offset (per ha) must be based on LCA
• Carbon offsetting depends on fossil fuel
  substituted as well as on biofuel production
• What are the key learnings, LCA can take home
  from the disciplines of economic modelling and
  geographic monitoring/modelling?
• Methodological issues
• Use of co-products
• Carbon hold-back
• Crop rotations
• Data, eg. N20 emissions
• Land use and changes
• Need to combine with other approaches

7
Economic Modelling

• What are the key contributions from the
  discipline of economic modelling of common value
  to the modelling of land use consequences of
  biofuels?
• Assessment of wider system impacts
• Role of markets structure/segmentation
• What are the key learnings, economic modelling
  can take home from the disciplines of LCA and
  geographic monitoring/modelling?
• Need to combine with other disciplines including
  behavioural sciences (eg. Farmers are not
  rational actors) and geography (eg. political
  economy)
• Match global models with more local analyses

8
Geographic Monitoring/Modelling

• What are the key contributions from the
  discipline of geographic monitoring/ modelling of
  common value to the modelling of land use
  consequences of biofuels?
• Monitoring of changes global and local
• Understanding of political economy leading to
  land use change
• Social benefits to actors in supply chain
• What are the key learnings, geographic
  monitoring/modelling can take home from the
  disciplines of LCA and economic modelling?
• Need to link qualitative analysis with
  quantitative
• regional/local understanding with global
  modelling

9
Generic cause-effect relationships

• How do we identify the marginal crop on the
  various crop markets in the demand and supply
  chains from the initial energy crop demand
  throughout the displacement-replacement
  mechanisms?
• Where will expansion of agriculture/forestry take
  place as a result of increased biofuel
  production, and what are the determining
  parameters for its location?
• How do we model the relationship between
  intensification of crop production (yield
  increase) and the demand for crops by biofuels as
  a new crop customer?
• What are the relations between an increased
  demand for energy crops and the supply and prices
  of food crops? (To which extent will the
  production of biofuels happen at the expense of
  food production?)
• Which crops are expected to be displaced and why
  and what is the displacement-replacement
  relationship expected to be? Dependencies on
  region and crop.