Challenge of biofuel: filling the tank without emptying the stomach?

Abstract

Biofuels have become a leading alternative to fossil fuel because they can be produced domestically by many countries, require only minimal changes to retail distribution and end-use technologies, are a partial response to global climate change, and because they have the potential to spur rural development. Production of biofuel has increased most rapidly for corn ethanol, in part because of government subsidies; yet, corn ethanol offers at most a modest contribution to society's climate change goals and only a marginally positive net energy balance. Current biofuels pose long-run consequences for the provision of food and environmental amenities. In the short run, however, when gasoline supply and demand are inelastic, they serve as a buffer supply of energy, helping to reduce prices. Employing a conceptual model and with back-of-the-envelope estimates of wealth transfers resulting from biofuel production, we find that ethanol subsidies pay for themselves. Adoption of second-generation technologies may make biofuels more beneficial to society. The large-scale production of new types of crops dedicated to energy is likely to induce structural change in agriculture and change the sources, levels, and variability of farm incomes. The socio-economic impact of biofuel production will largely depend on how well the process of technology adoption by farmers and processors is understood and managed. The confluence of agricultural policy with environmental and energy policies is expected.

Global bioenergy potential from high-lignin agricultural residue

“…Dedicated energy crops are being sought that produce high-yielding lignocellulosic biomass, such as Miscanthus (5). In undeveloped and developing countries, dedicated energy crops could displace food crops and confer imbalance in food and fuel security (6)(7)(8). Further, clearing forest land for bioenergy crops (directly or indirectly) will enhance CO 2 emissions resulting from land-use change (9) unless crops are grown on marginal (degraded) agricultural land or use waste biomass.…”

Sustainable biofuel production from non-food sources ? An overview

“…At present sugarcane, cassava, sugar-beet, wheat, rice, corn, and sorghum occupy about 42% of the world's cropping area (Rajagopal et al, 2007), which if directed towards bioethanol production to compensate increasing demand for fast growing human population, could have drastic effects on food security. Same is true for edible oil crops such as sunflower, rapeseed, canola and soybeans, which are common choices for biodiesel production.…”

“…About 20% of car fuel in Brazil, is obtained from bioethanol (Eshel et al, 2010) while it is the most widely used renewable transportation biofuel in the US with the production of 13.3 billion gallons in 2012 (Westpheling, 2014). Sugar cane is the dominant raw material in Brazil while many other crop plants such as cassava, sugar-beet, wheat, rice, corn, barley, potato, and sorghum are also being utilized for bioethanol production in different parts of the world (Rajagopal et al, 2007;Lee and Lavoie, 2013).…”

Biofuel and Food-Commodity Prices

“…This strand of the literature includes partial-equilibrium elasticity analysis as seen in reference [12], who show that the introduction of sugarcane ethanol leads to increased demand for sugarcane as well as an increase in supply. An early application of this approach was applied to corn and soybean biofuels [13]. These authors emphasized the uncertainty about the magnitude of both the supply and the demand elasticities.…”