The Impacts of Biofuels Targets on Land-Use Change and Food Supply: AGlobal CGE Assessment

We analyze the long-term impacts of large-scale expansion of biofuels on land-usechange, food supply and prices, and the overall economy in various countries or regions using amulti-country, multi-sector global computable general equilibrium model augmented with an explicitland-use module and detailed biofuel sectors. We find that an expansion of biofuel production tomeet the existing or even higher targets in various countries would slightly reduce GDP at the globallevel but with mixed effects across countries or regions. Significant land re-allocation would takeplace with notable decreases in forest and pasture lands in a few countries. The expansion ofbiofuels would cause a moderate decrease in world food supply and more significant decreases indeveloping countries like India and Sub-Saharan Africa. Feedstock commodities (sugar, corn and oilseeds) would experience significant increases in their prices in 2020, but other price changes aresmall.[...]