Abstract
Meeting the world’s growing energy demand through bioenergy production involves extensive land-use change which could have severe environmental and social impacts. Second generation bioenergy feedstocks offer a possible solution to this problem. They have the potential to reduce land-use conflicts between food and bioenergy production as they can be grown on low quality land not suitable for food production. However, a comprehensive impact assessment that considers multiple ecosystem services (ESS) and biodiversity is needed to identify the environmentally best feedstock option, as trade-offs are inherent. In this study, we simulate the spatial distribution of short rotation coppices (SRCs) in the landscape of the Mulde watershed in Central Germany by modeling profit-maximizing farmers under different economic and policy-driven scenarios using a spatially explicit economic simulation model. This allows to derive general insights and a mechanistic understanding of regional-scale impacts on multiple ESS in the absence of large-scale implementation. The modeled distribution of SRCs, required to meet the regional demand of combined heat and power (CHP) plants for solid biomass, had little or no effect on the provided ESS. In the policy-driven scenario, placing SRCs on low or high quality soils to provide ecological focus areas, as required within the Common Agricultural Policy in the EU, had little effect on ESS. Only a substantial increase in the SRC production area, beyond the regional demand of CHP plants, had a relevant effect, namely a negative impact on food production as well as a positive impact on biodiversity and regulating ESS. Beneficial impacts occurred for single ESS. However, the number of sites with balanced ESS supply hardly increased due to larger shares of SRCs in the landscape. Regression analyses showed that the occurrence of sites with balanced ESS supply was more strongly driven by biophysical factors than by the SRC share in the landscape. This indicates that SRCs negligibly affect trade-offs between individual ESS. Coupling spatially explicit economic simulation models with environmental and ESS assessment models can contribute to a comprehensive impact assessment of bioenergy feedstocks that have not yet been planted.
Highlights
The world’s energy demand is continuously growing [1, 2]
We investigate four economic scenarios differing in the demand for short rotation coppices (SRCs) products
We modeled the impact of major drivers of biodiversity loss on the mean species abundance (MSA) existing in undisturbed ecosystems
Summary
The world’s energy demand is continuously growing [1, 2] Meeting this demand through bioenergy production involves extensive land-use change which could have serious environmental and food security implications [3]. One possible solution to this problem are second generation (2G) bioenergy feedstocks: “perennial, ligno-cellulosic feedstocks that are non-food crops” [6] promoted by the EU through the Renewable Energy Directive (EU RED) [7]. They may reduce conflicts with food production as they can be grown on low quality land that is unsuitable for food production [8]. Short rotation coppices (SRCs) are prominently discussed 2G feedstocks [14]
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