Resource efficiency of future EU demand for bioenergy

Greenhouse gas emissions from the land-use sector will be lower if the rising demand for bioenergy is met with worldwide protection for areas important for biodiversity and carbon storage, shows this IIASA policy brief

The sensitivity of the costs of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) to future socioeconomic drivers and its implications for mitigation policy design

Climate change mitigation policies for the land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sector are commonly assessed based on marginal abatement cost curves (MACC) derived from optimization models or engineering approaches. Yet, little is known about the space of validity of MACCs and how they are influenced by changes in main underlying drivers. In this study, we apply the Global Forest Model (G4M) to explore the sensitivity of MACCs to variation of socioeconomic drivers of deforestation, afforestation, and forest management activities. Particularly, three key factors are considered: (I) wood price, as an indicator of timber market developments; (II) agricultural land price, as a proxy representing the developments on agricultural markets; and (III) corruption coefficient, representing the progress in institutional development and measuring abatement costs use efficiency. The results indicate that the MACCs are more sensitive to the corruption coefficient than to agricultural land price and wood price. Furthermore, we find that the MACCs are more robust with high carbon dioxide (CO2) price and that the sensitivity of the MACCs is higher at low CO2 prices. In general, it can be concluded that when assessing medium-term mitigation policies characterized by low CO2 prices, MACCs need to be developed in-line with institutions currently in place. When designing long-term mitigation policy characterized by high CO2 prices, the role of the analyzed drivers in MACCs estimation is less important

Ozone concentrations and damage for realistic future European climate and air quality scenarios

Ground level ozone poses a significant threat to human health from air pollution in the European Union. While anthropogenic emissions of precursor substances (NOx, NMVOC, CH4) are regulated by EU air quality legislation and will decrease further in the future, the emissions of biogenic NMVOC (mainly isoprene) may increase significantly in the coming decades if short-rotation coppice plantations are expanded strongly to meet the increased biofuel demand resulting from the EU decarbonisation targets. This study investigates the competing effects of anticipated trends in land use change, anthropogenic ozone precursor emissions and climate change on European ground level ozone concentrations and related health and environmental impacts until 2050. The work is based on a consistent set of energy consumption scenarios that underlie current EU climate and air quality policy proposals: a current legislation case, and an ambitious decarbonisation case. The Greenhouse Gas-Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) integrated assessment model was used to calculate air pollutant emissions for these scenarios, while land use change because of bioenergy demand was calculated by the Global Biosphere Model (GLOBIOM). These datasets were fed into the chemistry transport model LOTOS-EUROS to calculate the impact on ground level ozone concentrations. Health damage because of high ground level ozone concentrations is projected to decline significantly towards 2030 and 2050 under current climate conditions for both energy scenarios. Damage to plants is also expected to decrease but to a smaller extent. The projected change in anthropogenic ozone precursor emissions is found to have a larger impact on ozone damage than land use change. The increasing effect of a warming climate (+2–5 °C across Europe in summer) on ozone concentrations and associated health damage, however, might be higher than the reduction achieved by cutting back European ozone precursor emissions. Global action to reduce air pollutant emissions is needed to make sure that ozone damage in Europe decreases towards the middle of this century

Impacts of good practice policies on regional and global greenhouse gas emissions

The report looks at the impact of "good practice"emission reduction policies in nine different areas globally and across six countries: China, Brazil, India, the US, Russia and Japan. These include renewable energy, a variety of energy efficiency standards (buildings, car fuel efficiecy, appliances and lighting, industry), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC.s), emissions from fossil fuel production, electric cars and forestry. The authors looked at the most ambitious "good practice" policies around the world that are being implemented now, and calculated the difference these would make if everybody were to apply them. If all governments follow those governments that currently adopt the best climate policies in just nin different areas, they could reduce emissions close to the levels needed to stay on track to hold global warming below 2 degrees C. The implementation of good practice policies is projected to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions at 49-50 GtCO2e by 2020, and decrease to 44- 47 GtCO2e by 2030- close to the 2 degrees C emissions range (30-44 GtCO2e) by 2030. Direct replication of good practice policies is projected to halt emissions growth in most regions sinificantly before 2030. In contrast, current policies are expected to see emissions to increase to around 54 GtCO2e by 2020 and 59-60 GtCO2e by 2030

Spatially explicit assessment of roundwood and logging residues availability and costs for the EU28

Competition for woody biomass between material and energy uses is expected to further increase in the future, due to the limited availability of forest resources and increasing demand of wood for material and bioenergy. Currently, methodological approaches for modeling wood production and delivery costs from forest to industrial gates are missing. This study combines forest engineering, geographically explicit information, environmental constraints and economics in a bottom-up approach to assess cost–supply curves. The estimates are based on a multitude of wood supply systems that were assigned according to geographically explicit forestry characteristics. For each harvesting and transportation system, efficiencies were modeled according to harvesting sites and main delivery hubs. The cost–supply curves for roundwood and logging residues as estimates for current time and for the future (2030) show that there are large regional differences in the potential to increase extraction in the EU28. In most EU Member States, the costs of logging residues extraction increase exponentially already for low levels of mobilization, while extraction of roundwood can be increased to a larger extent within reasonable costs (30–40 $/m3). The large differences between countries in their harvest potential highlight the importance of spatially explicit analyses

Sensitivity of marginal abatement cost curves to variation of G4M parameters

Because of the G4M model non-linearity marginal abatement cost curves (MACCs) are sensitive to variation of the model parameters, irrespective of the fact that the same parameter variations are applied in both zero-CO2 price and non-zero-CO2 price runs. Since integrated assessment models in general are complex computer models with non-linearity one may expect all MACCs constructed using such models are sensitive to variation of the model parameters. The MACCs constructed using G4M are much more sensitive to parameter variation at a certain range of CO2 prices, usually low CO2 prices. The MACCs for total biomass CO2 emissions constructed using G4M are most sensitive to variation of corruption coefficient (measuring efficiency of use of abatement costs) and, on the second place, to agriculture land price. Experts applying MACCs for policy analysis must be aware of uncertainty features of the MACCs as the uncertainty can influence the outcome of the analysis

ClimWood2030, Climate benefits of material substitution by forest biomass and harvested wood products: Perspective 2030 - Final Report

The ClimWood2030 study, commissioned by DG CLIMA of the European Commission, quantifies the five ways in which the EU forest sector contributes to climate change mitigation: carbon sequestration and storage in EU forests, carbon storage in harvested wood products in the EU, substitution of wood products for functionally equivalent materials and substitution of wood for other sources of energy, and displacement of emissions from forests outside the EU. It also explores through scenario analysis, based on a series of interlocking models (GLOBIOM, G4M and WoodCarbonMonitor), along with detailed analysis of Forest Based Functional Units, based on life cycle assessment (LCA), the consequences for GHG balances of policy choices at present under consideration. The focus is on the EU-28, but GHG balances for other parts of the world are also considered, notably to assess consequences of EU policy choices for other regions. The five scenarios are (I) The ClimWood2030 reference scenario, (II) Increase carbon stock in existing EU forests, (III) Cascade use – increase recovery of solid wood products, (IV) Cascade use – prevent first use of biomass for energy and (V) Strongly increase material wood use. The study presents detailed scenario results for key parameters, the policy instruments linked to the scenarios, and main conclusions

Global food efficiency of climate change mitigation in agriculture

Concerns exist regarding potential trade-offs between climate change mitigation in agriculture and food security. Against this background, the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM) is applied to a range of scenarios of mitigation of emissions from agriculture to assess the implications of climate mitigation for agricultural production, prices and food availability. The " food efficiency of mitigation " (FEM) is introduced as a tool to make statements about how to attain desired levels of agricultural mitigation in the most efficient manner in terms of food security. It is applied to a range of policy scenarios which contrast a climate policy regime with full global collaboration to scenarios of fragmented climate policies that grant exemptions to selected developing country groups. Results indicate increasing marginal costs of abatement in terms of food calories and suggest that agricultural mitigation is most food efficient in a policy regime with global collaboration. Exemptions from this regime cause food efficiency losses

Global food efficiency of climate change mitigation in agriculture

Concerns exist regarding potential trade-offs between climate change mitigation in agriculture and food security. Against this background, the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM) is applied to a range of scenarios of mitigation of emissions from agriculture to assess the implications of climate mitigation for agricultural production, prices and food availability. The “food efficiency of mitigation” (FEM) is introduced as a tool to make statements about how to attain desired levels of agricultural mitigation in the most efficient manner in terms of food security. It is applied to a range of policy scenarios which contrast a climate policy regime with full global collaboration to scenarios of fragmented climate policies that grant exemptions to selected developing country groups. Results indicate increasing marginal costs of abatement in terms of food calories and suggest that agricultural mitigation is most food efficient in a policy regime with global collaboration. Exemptions from this regime cause food efficiency losse