An approach to computing marginal land use change carbon intensities for bioenergy in policy applications

Author

Marshall Wise, Elke L. Hodson, Bryan K. Mignone, Leon Clarke, Stephanie Waldhoff and Patrick Luckow

Energy Economics, 2015, vol. 50, issue C, pages 337-347

Abstract: Accurately characterizing the emissions implications of bioenergy is increasingly important to the design of regional and global greenhouse gas mitigation policies. Market-based policies, in particular, often use information about carbon intensity to adjust relative deployment incentives for different energy sources. However, the carbon intensity of bioenergy is difficult to quantify because carbon emissions can occur when land use changes to expand production of bioenergy crops rather than simply when the fuel is consumed as for fossil fuels. Using a long-term, integrated assessment model, this paper develops an approach for computing the carbon intensity of bioenergyproduction that isolates the marginal impact of increasing production of a specific bioenergy crop in a specific region, taking into account economic competition among land uses. We explore several factors that affect emissions intensity and explain these results in the context of previous studies that use different approaches. Among the factors explored, our results suggest that the carbon intensity of bioenergyproduction from land use change (LUC) differs by a factor of two depending on the region in which the bioenergy crop is grown in the United States. Assumptions about international land use policies (such as those related to forest protection) and crop yields also significantly impact carbon intensity. Finally, we develop and demonstrate a generalized method for considering the varying time profile of LUC emissions from bioenergy production, taking into account the time path of future carbon prices, the discount rate and the time horizon. When evaluated in the context of power sector applications, we found electricity from bioenergy crops to be less carbon-intensive than conventional coal-fired electricity generation and often less carbon-intensive than natural-gas fired generation.

Keywords: Bioenergy crops; Land use change; Carbon intensity; Integrated assessment modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 Q42 Q51 E27 F18 O13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988315001619
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:http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:50:y:2015:i:c:p:337-347

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from  Elsevier
Series data maintained by Shamier, Wendy (repec@elsevier.com).

For further details log on website :
http://econpapers.repec.org/scripts/search.pf?kw=cellulosic%20bioenergy%20crops;pg=11