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Concerns about energy security, uncertainty about oil prices, declining oil reserves, and global climate change are fueling a shift towards bioenergy as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels. Public policies and private investments around the globe are aiming to increase local capacity to produce biofuels. A key constraint to the expansion of biofuel production is the limited amount of land available to meet the needs for fuel, feed, and food in the coming decades. Large-scale biofuel production raises concerns about food versus fuel tradeoffs, about demands for natural resources such as water, and about potential impacts on environmental quality.
The book is organized into five parts. The introductory part will provide a context for the emerging economic and policy challenges related to bioenergy and present the key issues covered in the book. The second part will present economic analysis of the market, social welfare, and distributional effects of biofuel policies, including tax credits, mandates, and likely winners and losers of these policies. Chapters in the third part will discuss the implications of a growing biofuel industry on agricultural markets, food prices and commodity price volatility, including demand and supply in general equilibrium approaches. The fourth part will examine the implications of the emerging biofuel industry for land allocation for food and energy production, for international trade, and for the agricultural sectors of developing countries. The final part will assess the implications of biofuels for the environment and sustainability, including global warming, water, land use and infrastructure, and the challenges in determining these effects using lifecycle analysis.
The Economics Of Bioenergy: Introduction And Overview.- Perennial Grass As Second-Generation Sustainable Feedstocks Without Conflict With Food Production.- Present and Future Possibilities for Deconstruction and Utilization of Lignocellulosic Biomass.-Biofuels in the Context of Renewable Energy.- The Welfare Economics of Biofuel Tax Credits and Mandates.- Market and Social Welfare Effects of the Renewable Fuels Standard.- Welfare and Equity Implications of Biofuel's Emergence.- The Political Economy of Bioenergy: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why.- Prospects for Ethanol and Biodiesel, 2008 to 2017 and Impacts on Agriculture and Food.- Demand Behavior and Commodity Price Volatility under Evolving Biofuel Markets and Policies.- Biofuels, Policy Options, and Their Implications: Analyses Using Partial and General Equilibrium Approaches.- Meeting Biofuel Targets: Implications for Land Use, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Nitrogen Use in Illinois.- The Economics of Trade, Biofuel, and the Environment.- Modeling Different Land Qualities in the Production of Food and Clean Energy.- The Global Bioenergy Expansion: How Large Are the Food-Fuel Tradeoffs?- Policy, Trade and Biofuels in Importing Regions.- Biofuels and Agricultural Growth: Challenges for Developing Agricultural Economies and Opportunities for Investment.- European Union Biofuel Policy: Are We Heading in the Right Direction?- Incorporating price responsiveness into environmental lifecycle assessment.- US-Brazil Trade in Biofuels: Determinants, Constraints and Implications for Trade Policy.- Corn Stover Harvesting: Potential Supply and Water Quality Implications.- Can Biofuels be Used to Harvest the Greenhouse: An Economic Investigation of Biofuels and Climate Change.- Biofuel Infrastructure and Life Cycle.
