Introducing first and second generation biofuels into GTAP 9 Data Base

Abstract

The standard GTAP data bases do not explicitly represent production, consumption, and trade of biofuels. In response to the growing demand for biofuels research, biofuels (including ethanol produced from grains, ethanol produced from sugarcane, and biodiesel produced from vegetable oils) were introduced in to the GTAP data base version 6 which represents the global economy in 2001 [1]. In 2001 the global production of biofuels (including ethanol and biodiesel) was about 5 billion gallons. Then the first and second generation of biofuels were introduced into the GTAP data base version 7 for 2004 [2]. In 2004 the global production of all types of first generation of biofuels was about 7.8 billion gallons. In 2004, there was no commercial production of second generation of biofuels (biofuels produced from cellulosic materials). However, several second generation biofuel technologies were introduced into this data base. Several studies have used the first and second versions of the GTAP-BIO data bases to project the economic and land use impacts of biofuel production and policy at the global scale