"Review and inter-comparison of modelling land use change effects of bioenergy"

This document contains the Proceedings of the Expert Consultation: "Review and inter-comparison of modelling land use change effects of bioenergy", held in Paris, on 29 - 30 January 2009. This meeting was organised by the Sustainability of Bioenergy Action of the Institute for Energy (IE), Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission and the European Environment Agency (EEA) with the support of OECD/IEA. Direct and indirect land use change (ILUC) is probably the most significant factor for the overall environmental impact of biofuels in particular, including on overall greenhouse gas (GHG) balance. Analysing and modelling the overall effects of bioenergy policies is a very complex exercise that requires a combination of energy, agro-economic, global land use and so-called "bio-physical" modelling approaches. Various research groups around the world are modelling indirect land use change (ILUC) from biofuel/energy, and its associated GHG emissions. Generally, each group would choose different biofuel policy scenarios and different reference scenarios. This means that there will be no way to compare the results of one model with others, and this will undermine the credibility of all the results. One key objective of this workshop is to agree a standard "reference scenario" for global biofuel/energy demand and several "extra biofuels scenarios" to be run in various economic models so that the results can be compared, at the level of market impact, LUC or emissions. Another objective of the meeting was to recognise the critical modelling assumptions which affect model results for the same input scenarios and to identify the data gaps that need to be resolved for more precise estimates of the GHG effects and other environmental impacts of bioenergy policies. Inter-comparison also requires a standardized form of results, and the establishment of the format of outputs at different levels, (markets, land use, emissions) was addressed.