Contribution of Global CO2 Emissions Pledges to Bioenergy Expansion: a Long-Term Analysis of Bioenergy Sector Using TIAM-FR Model

Abstract

The consumption of fossil energy is the major source of CO2 emissions and each country makes a great effort to diversify their energy mix to achieve their targets of CO2 emissions by replacing fossil energy by cleaner energy sources including bioenergy. In this context, global bioenergy market increased drastically during last decades. According to IEA, bioenergy trade reached 120-130 PJ for liquid biofuel and 75PJ for wood pellets by 2009. In addition, under the aegis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 161 countries of 189 parties have already submitted their intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) to mitigate climate change as of 4th April 2016, including CO2 emissions pledges. At the 21st conference of parties (COP), was held in Paris, France in December 2015, a new international climate agreement was created based on each country’s INDCs to keep the global average temperature increase below 2 °C or 1.5 °C for some countries. Hence, bioenergy market is expected to be further expanded in the future for the reason of mitigation of climate change as well as a new energy and agricultural market. In this study, we estimated the role of CO2 pledges and/or the future international climate agreement for bioenergy sector expansion using bottom-up energy system optimization model, TIAM-FR, a TIMES family model from ETSAP/IEA. Through the results, we analyzed global bioenergy development of different types of final bioenergy as solid and liquid bioenergy as well as different biomass feedstocks.