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The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 established specific targets for the production of biofuel in the U.S. Meeting these targets will increase demand for traditional ag. commodities used to produce ethanol, resulting in land-use, production, and price changes in the farm sector. This report summarizes the estimated effects of meeting the EISA targets for 2015 on regional ag. production and the environment. Meeting EISA targets for ethanol production will expand U.S. cropped acreage by 5 million acres by 2015, an increase of 1.6% over what would otherwise be expected. Much of the growth comes from corn acreage, which increases by 3.5% over baseline projections. Water quality and soil carbon will also be affected.
"Biofuels are currently in the middle of a heated academic and public policy debate. Biofuel production has increased fivefold in the past decade and is expected to further double by 2020. Most of this expansion will happen in developing nations. This volume is the first of its kind, providing a comprehensive overview of the biofuel debate in developing countries. The chapters are written by a multidisciplinary team of experts, exposing the key drivers and impacts of biofuel production and use. The book covers impacts as diverse as air pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation, energy security, food security, greenhouse gas emissions, land use change, rural development, water consumption and other socioeconomic issues. Its wide focus accommodates examples from countries in Africa, America and Asia. As such, this book will become an indispensable companion to academics, practitioners and policy makers who wish to know more about biofuel issues in the developing world"--Provided by publisher.
This study assesses land use changes and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emission impacts due to expansion of corn-based ethanol production in the United States. The land use change estimates discussed in this paper were developed for a scenario where U.S. corn-based ethanol production expands from approximately 2 billion gallons per year in 2000/2001 to 15 billion gallons per year (bgy) in 2015/16. The overall conclusion of this report is that 15 bgy of corn ethanol production in 2015/16 should not result in new forest or grassland conversion in the U.S. or abroad.
Summarizes the current state of knowledge of the drivers of land-use change and describes the analytic methods used to estimate the impact of biofuel feedstock production on land use. The larger the impact of domestic biofuels feedstock production on commodity prices and the availability of exports, the larger the international land-use effects are likely to be. The amount of pressure placed on land internationally will depend in part on how much of the land needed for biofuel production is met through an expansion of agricultural land in the U.S. If crop yield per acre increases through more intensive management or new crop varieties, then less land is needed to grow a particular amount of that crop. Illustrations. This is a print on demand report.
Price changes affect the profitability of agricultural land use at the intensive margin (i.e. crop choice) and the extensive margin (i.e. land devoted to crop production). Understanding how prices impact localized land use decisions is important for predicting how production and its allocation across producers change with prices. Due to its wide expanse and diverse geography, the productivity US land differs across space and uses. Understanding the drivers of land use decisions while accounting for such diversity is essential for accurately modeling supply response at the regional and national level. This dissertation contains two studies that provide insight into how price changes impact land use decisions at the extensive and intensive margins. In the first chapter examine the corn supply-price relationship in the United States. I perform this analysis using field-level data across the contiguous US (CONUS). This study is unique in that it incorporates micro-level data from over 3 million fields to estimate region-specific supply response and then aggregates results to the national level. The dataset used in this study is nearly comprehensive, representing field-level decisions across fields that accounted for over 88% of national corn production between 2009 and 2016. The findings from this study illustrate the importance of incorporating heterogeneity in supply response models. Supply response to price differed substantially across regions with high supply sensitivity in the north-central US and Mississippi River Delta, moderate sensitivity in Corn Belt states, andlow sensitivity in the western and Gulf Coast states. The relative importance of corn production in the in the Corn Belt states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Nebraska meant that it was far less sensitive and, in the long-run, more stable to price changes than national corn supply as a whole. Including heterogeneity in supply response also provided policy relevant context to supply response studies. Overall supply response was negatively correlated with area yields. This meant that price changes have a larger effect on planted corn acres and a smaller effect quantity of corn itself. In the last chapter I examine the impact that ethanol plant capacity has on local land use at the extensive margin. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has been one of the most influential agricultural policies in the past 20 years, increasing general US crop prices by over 20% and inducing a substantial in US ethanol production capacity (Carter et al., 2016; Roberts and Schlenker, 2013). Its effect on cropland extensification was a concern before it was passed since the policy includes a stipulation forbidding ethanol production on cropland converted after 2007. Lands at the extensive margin tend to be less productive and more environmentally sensitive. Extensive transitions also tend to be less frequent than transitory breaks in crop rotations making their impacts longer-lasting. The goal of this final analysis is to isolate the impact of ethanol expansion on cropland transitions from the general price changes. The concurrent increase in general crop prices and ethanol construction from the RFS complicates the estimation of plants' effects. I isolate these effects using difference- in-differences (DID) which removes impact from common price trends between the treatment and control group. The standard DID approach results show significant pre-treatment effects stemming from non-random ethanol plant construction. Treatment is likely non-random since ethanol plants lo- cate in areas that provide better returns. Factors that impact the returns to plants confound the analysis since they likely also impact cropland transition decisions. To address this, I use propensity score matching to ensure these confounding factors are identically distributed between the treatment and control groups. Under the matched DID models, the expansion of ethanol plants tended to increase cropland retainment and reduce lands transitioning from non-cropland to cropland. While these results seem contradictory, they are consistent with the findings in recent literature. These impacts are thought to arise due to higher program retention in the major US cropland retirement program CRP due to changes that disproportionately impacted major ethanol production areas.
In its second volume, this book aims to link the academic research with development in the real world and provide a historical and institutional background that can enrich more formal research. The first section will include an assessment of the evolution and the state of the nascent second-generation biofuel as well as a perspective on the evolution of corn ethanol and sugarcane ethanol in Brazil. It will also include a historical and institutional background on the biofuel industry in Brazil that has global lessons, and later, provide a technical overview of major analytical tools used to assess the economic, land use and greenhouse gas implications of biofuel policies at a regional and global level. Additionally, the book analyzes the various drivers for land use change both at a micro-economic level and at a macro-economic level. It presents studies that apply regional and global economic models to examine the effects of biofuel policies in the US, EU and Brazil on regional and global land use, on food and fuel prices and greenhouse gas emissions. These papers illustrate the use of partial and general equilibrium modeling approaches to simulate the effects of various biofuel policies, and includes studies showing the effects of risk aversion, time preferences and liquidity constraints on farmers decision to grow energy crops for biofuel production. By presenting the tools of lifecycle analysis for assessing the direct greenhouse gas intensity of biofuels, this handbook investigates the types of indirect or market mediated effects that can offset or strengthen these direct effects. It will include tools to assess the direct and indirect effects of biofuel production on greenhouse gas emissions in the US and Brazil, and ultimately provide a comprehensive background to understand the state of biofuel in the present and how to analyze their implication.
While energy prices, energy security, and climate change are front and center in the national media, these issues are often framed to the exclusion of the broader issue of sustainability-ensuring that the production and use of biofuels do not compromise the needs of future generations by recognizing the need to protect life-support systems, promote economic growth, and improve societal welfare. Thus, it is important to understand the effects of biofuel production and use on water quality and quantity, soils, wildlife habitat and biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, public health, and the economic viability of rural communities.
Land has long been overlooked in economics. That is now changing. A substantial part of the solution to the climate crisis may lie in growing crops for fuel and using trees for storing carbon. This book investigates the potential of these options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, estimates the costs to the economy, and analyses the trade-offs with growing food. The first part presents new databases that are necessary to underpin policy-relevant research in the field of climate change while describing and critically assessing the underlying data, the methodologies used, and the first applications. Together, the new data and the extended models allow for a thorough and comprehensive analysis of a land use and climate policy. This book outlines key empirical and analytical issues associated with modelling land use and land use change in the context of global climate change policy. It places special emphasis on the economy-wide competition for land and other resources, especially; The implications of changes in land use for the cost of climate change mitigation, Land use change as a result of mitigation, and Feedback from changes in the global climate to land use. By offering synthesis and evaluation of a variety of different approaches to this challenging field of research, this book will serve as a key reference for future work in the economic analysis of land use and climate change policy.
In the United States, we have come to depend on plentiful and inexpensive energy to support our economy and lifestyles. In recent years, many questions have been raised regarding the sustainability of our current pattern of high consumption of nonrenewable energy and its environmental consequences. Further, because the United States imports about 55 percent of the nation's consumption of crude oil, there are additional concerns about the security of supply. Hence, efforts are being made to find alternatives to our current pathway, including greater energy efficiency and use of energy sources that could lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as nuclear and renewable sources, including solar, wind, geothermal, and biofuels. The United States has a long history with biofuels and the nation is on a course charted to achieve a substantial increase in biofuels. Renewable Fuel Standard evaluates the economic and environmental consequences of increasing biofuels production as a result of Renewable Fuels Standard, as amended by EISA (RFS2). The report describes biofuels produced in 2010 and those projected to be produced and consumed by 2022, reviews model projections and other estimates of the relative impact on the prices of land, and discusses the potential environmental harm and benefits of biofuels production and the barriers to achieving the RFS2 consumption mandate. Policy makers, investors, leaders in the transportation sector, and others with concerns for the environment, economy, and energy security can rely on the recommendations provided in this report.