New ILUC study could open new doors for biofuels debate

A new US study by Air Improvement Resource, consultancy (S&T) Squared and the University of Illinois Chicago concludes in much lower ILUC values for biodiesel and biofuels.

Economic modelling applied to bioenergy has been heavily questioned recently. With successive reports proposing improvements in assumptions, the indirect land use change (ILUC) estimates on biofuels have decreased sharply.

This June the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) concluded in an 80% reduction of indirect emissions, with a value for biodiesel of 10gCO2eq/MJ. The research observed that current ILUC models use lower values for increasing yields than actual observed data trends.

The new US study Land Use Change Greenhouse Gas emissions of European Biofuel Policies Utilizing the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) evaluates land use changes for several biofuels pathways and policies.

‘This work has found that ILUC calculated using the latest version of GTAP is much less than those calculated by IFPRI in 2011,’ says Steffen Mueller of the University of Illinois.

It concludes biodiesel could account for as little as 2,33gCO2eq/MJ, compared to current 55gCO2eq/MJ allocated in a European Commission proposal amending biofuels policy. That represents a 95% difference, mainly due to improved understanding as regards land use, crop yields and forest use in the EU, Canada and the US.

Suggestions for further improvements are also provided like regionalisation of the analysis and crop specificity of yield. The divergence of results due to a slight change in assumptions, once again, opens the floor to question the validity of ILUC science for policy making.

‘Policymakers can no longer deny the immaturity of science to serve for policy making,’ believes Raffaello Garofalo, secretary general of the European Biodiesel Board.