Abstract
Bioenergy is expected to play an important role in the achievement of stringent climate-change mitigation targets requiring the application of negative emissions technology. Using a multi-model framework, we assess the effects of high bioenergy demand on global food production, food security, and competition for agricultural land. Various scenarios simulate global bioenergy demands of 100, 200, 300, and 400 exajoules (EJ) by 2100, with and without a carbon price. Six global energy-economy-agriculture models contribute to this study, with different methodologies and technologies used for bioenergy supply and greenhouse-gas mitigation options for agriculture. We find that the large-scale use of bioenergy, if not implemented properly, would raise food prices and increase the number of people at risk of hunger in many areas of the world. For example, an increase in global bioenergy demand from 200 to 300 EJ causes a − 11% to + 40% change in food crop prices and decreases food consumption from − 45 to − 2 kcal person−1 day−1, leading to an additional 0 to 25 million people at risk of hunger compared with the case of no bioenergy demand (90th percentile range across models). This risk does not rule out the intensive use of bioenergy but shows the importance of its careful implementation, potentially including regulations that protect cropland for food production or for the use of bioenergy feedstock on land that is not competitive with food production.
Highlights
Land-based mitigation options play an important role in the assessment of stringent climate mitigation policies (Popp et al 2014b, 2017)
Agricultural land used for food production, and per-capita dietary energy consumption represent food availability; the food self-sufficiency ratio represents food stability; and the remaining indicators represent food access (FAO 2016)
To project the undernourished population, we adopt the methodology of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): a probability distribution framework documented in Cafiero (2014) and used by Fujimori et al (2019) and Hasegawa et al 2015a, b, 2018
Summary
Land-based mitigation options play an important role in the assessment of stringent climate mitigation policies (Popp et al 2014b, 2017). Potential competition for land between food and bioenergy crop production is of concern. The large-scale use of bioenergy, to support stringent temperature ceilings of 2 or 1.5 °C by the end of this century, would change land dynamics, put pressure on land resources (Popp et al 2014b), compete with food production, and increase the risk of hunger in middle- and low-income regions (Frank et al 2017; Hasegawa et al 2015a, 2018). The use of bioenergy to replace fossil fuels is addressed in other studies (e.g., Hasegawa et al 2018; Bauer et al 2018) but not in the context of food security. This study provides an in-depth analysis of the relationship between bioenergy and use of land for meeting food demand
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