A team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has argued that emissions from biofuels will be as bad as diesel and petrol due to large-scale land clearing.
Demand for biofuels is expected to rapidly grow to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions.
However, researchers have argued that they are far from being a carbon-neutral alternative to diesel and petrol.
In a new study, led by an expert team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), it has been revealed that emissions from biofuels might exceed those of fossil fuel combustion. This is due to large-scale land clearing related to growing biomass.
Before bioenergy can contribute towards climate-related goals, the team has argued that international agreements must ensure the protection of forests and other natural lands by introducing carbon pricing.
The study, ‘Bioenergy-induced land-use-change emissions with sectorally fragmented policies,’ is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Emissions from biofuels could rise without global land regulation
“Our results show: The state of current global land regulation is inadequate to control land-use-change emissions from modern biofuels,” lead author Leon Merfort explained.
“If cultivation for bioenergy grasses is not strictly limited to marginal or abandoned land, food production could shift and agricultural land use expand into natural land. This would cause substantial carbon dioxide emissions due to forest clearing in regions with weak or no land regulation.”
The indirect effects of bioenergy use are a challenge for policymakers. This is because food an bioenergy markets are globally connected but beyond the control of individual national policies.
The regulatory gap in the land-use sector keeps the bioenergy supply cheap.
However, this gap is also pushing the energy sector to phase out fossil fuels even faster to compensate for land-use change. This spiral increases the demand for bioenergy.
Pricing emissions from land-use change
“We find that without additional land-use regulation, land clearing related to the production of modern biofuels results in CO2 emission factors – averaged over a 30-year period – that are higher than those from burning fossil diesel,” co-author Florian Humpenöder said.
These results emphasise the need for a shift in land-use policy.
“Our results show that a globally comprehensive land protection or carbon pricing scheme would avoid high CO2 emissions from land-use change related to the production of modern biomass.”
“Phasing out fossil fuels will generate demands of bioenergy worth hundreds of billions of Dollars by mid-century,” co-author Nico Bauer highlighted.
“The agricultural sector will try to take advantage of these new opportunities, but potential expansion into high-yield areas often coincides with high upfront CO2 emissions from land conversion. Only reducing the demand for bioenergy will not solve this problem. Surprisingly, we also find that the protection of 90% of all global forest areas is not enough because the remaining 10% would still be too big of a loophole.”
The team found that it is not the price itself that is crucial, but the comprehensiveness to cover near 100% of all forests and other natural lands.
Pricing all emissions from biofuels with only 20% of the CO2 price in the energy system is more effective than a protection scheme covering 90% of all forests globally.
The team concluded that the protection of carbon stored in existing forests should be placed high on the international policy agenda as fossil fuel phase-out progresses and regulations in the land-use sector lag behind.
Bauer said: “Our results show that bioenergy can be produced with limited emissions under effective land-use regulations. Yet, if the regulatory gap remains wide open, bioenergy will not be part of the solution to mitigate climate change, but part of the problem.”
