The global land use implications of biofuel expansion have received considerable attention in the literature over the past decade. Model\uffe2\uff80\uff90based estimates of the emissions from cropland expansion have been used to assess the environmental impacts of biofuel policies. And integrated assessment models have estimated the potential for biofuels to contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement over the coming century. All of these studies feature, explicitly or implicitly, competition between biofuel feed stocks and other land uses. However, the economic mechanisms governing this competition, as well as the contribution of biofuels to global land use change, have not received the close scrutiny that they deserve. The purpose of this article is to offer a deeper look at these factors. We begin with a comparative static analysis which assesses the impact of exogenously specified forecasts of biofuel expansion over the period: 2006\uffe2\uff80\uff932035. Global land use change is decomposed according to the three key margins of economic response: extensive supply, intensive supply, and demand. Under the International Energy Agency's \uffe2\uff80\uff9cNew Policies\uffe2\uff80\uff9d scenario, biofuels account for nearly one\uffe2\uff80\uff90fifth of global land use change over the 2006\uffe2\uff80\uff932035 period. The article also offers a comparative dynamic analysis which determines the optimal path for first and second generation biofuels over the course of the entire 21st century. In the absence of GHG regulation, the welfare\uffe2\uff80\uff90maximizing path for global land use, in the face of 3% annual growth in oil prices, allocates 225 Mha to biofuel feed stocks by 2100, with the associated biofuels accounting for about 30% of global liquid fuel consumption. This area expansion is somewhat diminished by expected climate change impacts on agriculture, while it is significantly increased by an aggressive GHG emissions target and by advances in conversion efficiency of second generation biofuels.
", "keywords": ["2. Zero hunger", "13. Climate action", "0502 economics and business", "05 social sciences", "11. Sustainability", "Biofuels", " global land use", " partial equilibrium analysis", " comparative statics", " comparative dynamics", " climate change impacts", " carbon policies", " Land Economics/Use", " Resource /Energy Economics and Policy", " Q11", " Q15", " Q24", " Q42", " Q54", "", "15. Life on land", "7. Clean energy", "01 natural sciences", "12. Responsible consumption", "0105 earth and related environmental sciences"], "contacts": [{"organization": "Uris Lantz C. Baldos, Jevgenijs Steinbuks, Jevgenijs Steinbuks, Thomas W. Hertel,", "roles": ["creator"]}]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12057"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Agricultural%20Economics", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.1111/agec.12057", "name": "item", "description": "10.1111/agec.12057", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.1111/agec.12057"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2012-01-01T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.1146/annurev-resource-091912-151933", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"license": "unspecified", "updated": "2026-04-13T16:20:01Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2013-06-01", "title": "The Perverse Effects Of Biofuel Public-Sector Policies", "description": "Biofuel policies are a subset of policies designed to achieve energy security, an improved environment, enhanced agricultural incomes, technological change, and overall economic benefits, with increased domestic energy production creating green jobs and foreign exchange savings. In assessing this broad spectrum of proclaimed policy goals with the outcome of biofuel mandates, subsidies, import barriers, binary sustainability standards, and indirect land use measures, we identify many perverse and contradictory effects. Most importantly, we show how biofuel policies established the crop-energy price link and hence the food-fuel trade-off, the contradictory effects of combining mandates with different subsidies, the various surprising welfare economic effects, and the various inconsistencies associated with binary sustainability standards and carbon leakages. We conclude with examples of how biofuel policies have generated paradoxical effects in many other different dimensions.
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