Abstract
Rising energy demands, volatile oil prices, and concerns about climate change have led countries to look for alternatives to fossil fuels. Biofuels, or fuels produced from organic matter, have been embraced as a promising alternative to oil, because in principle they can lower carbon emissions, enhance domestic energy security, and revitalize rural economies. More than sixty countries have biofuel targets or mandates, which have led global production to grow from 16 to 120 billion liters over the last decade.
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Notes
- 1.
José Escobar, Electo Lora, Osvaldo Venturini, Edgar Yáñez, Edgar Castillo, and Oscar Almazan, “Biofuels: Environment, Technology and Food Security,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 13 (2009): 1275–87, doi:10.1016/j.rser.2008.08.014.
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Ibid.
- 3.
IEA, World Energy Outlook 2015 (see ch. 1, n. 3).
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International Energy Agency, Technology Roadmap: Biofuels for Transport, 2011, http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/biofuels_roadmap_web.pdf.
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Ronald Conte, “How Much Farmland Is Used for Biofuel?,” Hunger Math: World Hunger by the Numbers (blog), Oct. 29, 2015, https://hungermath.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/how-much-farmland-is-used-for-biofuel/.
- 6.
US IEA, Annual Energy Outlook 2013 (see ch. 4, n. 15).
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US IEA, World Energy Outlook 2015 (see ch. 1, n. 3).
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Escobar et al., “Biofuels: Environment, Technology and Food Security”; Joseph Fargione, Richard Plevin, and Jason Hill, “The Ecological Impact of Biofuels,” Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 41 (2010): 351–77, doi:10.1146/annurev-ecolsys −102209-144720.
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Ibid.
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Lian Pin Koh and Jaboury Ghzoul, “Spatially Explicit Scenario Analysis for Reconciling Agricultural Expansion, Forest Protection, and Carbon Conservation in Indonesia,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, no. 24 (2010): 11140–11144, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1000530107
- 11.
Fargione et al., “Ecological Impact of Biofuels.”
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Michael Curran, Laura de Baan, An De Schryver, Rosalie Van Zelm, Stefanie Hellweg, Thomas Koellner, Guido Sonnemann, and Mark Huijbregts, “Toward Meaningful End Points of Biodiversity in Life Cycle Assessment,” Environmental Science Technology 45 (2010): 70–79, doi:10.1021/es101444k.
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Fargione et al., “Ecological Impact of Biofuels.”
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Taylor Ricketts and Eric Lonsdorf, “Mapping the Margin: Comparing Marginal Values of Tropical Forest Remnants for Pollination Services,” Ecological Applications 23, no. 5 (2013): 1113–23, doi:10.1890/12-1600.1.
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Ibid.
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Curran et al., “Toward Meaningful End Points.”
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David Lapola, Ruediger Schaldach, Joseph Alcamo, Alberte Bondeau, Jennifer Koch, Christina Koelking, and Joerg Priess, “Indirect Land-Use Changes Can Overcome Carbon Savings from Biofuels in Brazil,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, no. 8 (2010): 3388–93, doi:10.1073/pnas.0907318107.
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Christina Kennedy, Daniela Miteva, Leandro Baumgarten, Peter Hawthorne, Kei Sochi, Stephen Polasky, James Oakleaf, Elizabeth Uhlhorn, and Joseph Kiesecker, “Bigger Is Better: Improved Nature Conservation and Economic Returns from Landscape-Level Mitigation,” Science Advances 2, no. 7 (2016):e1501021, doi:10.1126/sciadv.1501021.
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Britaldo Soares-Filho, Raoni Rajão, Marcia Macedo, Arnaldo Carneiro, William Costa, Michael Coe, Hermann Rodrigues, and Ane Alencar, “Cracking Brazil’s Forest Code,” Science 344, no. 6182 (2014): 363–64, doi:10.1126/science.1246663.
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Christina Kennedy, Peter Hawthorne, Daniela Miteva, Leandro Baumgarten, Kei Sochi, Marcelo Matsumoto, Jeffrey Evans, Stephen Polasky, Perrine Hamel, Emerson Vieira, Pedro Ferreira Develey, Cagan Sekercioglu, Ana Davidson, Elizabeth Uhlhorn, and Joseph Kiesecker, “Optimizing Land Use Decision-Making to Sustain Brazilian Agricultural Profits, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Services,” Biological Conservation 204 Part B 2016:221–230, doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2016.10.039.
- 21.
There was little overlap in the geographic distributions of sugarcane profit and biodiversity (Spearman’s rank, ρ = 0.47) or water quality (ρ =−0.05), and between biodiversity and water quality (ρ = −0.14).
- 22.
Soares-Filho et al., “Cracking Brazil’s Forest Code.”
- 23.
Patrick O’Farrell and Pippin Anderson, “Sustainable Multifunctional Landscapes: A Review to Implementation,” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2, no. 1–2 (2010): 59–65, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2010.02.005.
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Becca Madsen, Nathaniel Carroll, Daniel Kandy, and Genevieve Bennett, “2011 Update: State of Biodiversity Markets” (Washington, DC: Forest Trends, 2011), http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/reports/2011_update_sbdm.
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David Hayes, “Addressing the Environmental Impacts of Large Infrastructure Projects: Making ‘Mitigation’ Matter,” Environmental Law Reporter 44 (2014): 10016–21.
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Madsen et al., “2011 Update.”
- 27.
IEA, Technology Roadmap.
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Betsy Yaap, Matthew Struebig, Gary Paoli, and Lian Koh, “Mitigating the Biodiversity Impacts of Oil Palm Development,” CAB Reviews: Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources 5, no. 019 (2010): 1–11.
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Yaap et al., “Mitigating the Biodiversity Impacts.”; Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer, Malin Jonell, Anne Guerry, Eric Lambin, Alexis Morgan, Derric Pennington, Nathan Smith, Jane Atkins Franch, and Stephen Polasky, “Ecosystem Service Information to Benefit Sustainability Standards for Commodity Supply Chains,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1355 (2015): 77–97, doi:10.1111/nyas.12961.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Lian Koh, Patrice Levang, and Jaboury Ghazoul, “Designer Landscapes for Sustainable Biofuels,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 24, no. 8 (2009): 431–38, doi:10.1016/j.tree.2009.03.012.; Jaboury Ghazoul, Claude Garcia, and C.G. Kushalappa, “Landscape Labelling: A Concept for Next-Generation Payment for Ecosystem Service Schemes,” Forest Ecology and Management 258, no 9 (2009): 1889–95, doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2009.01.038; Teja Tscharntke, Jeffrey Milder, Götz Schroth, Yann Clough, Fabrice DeClerck, Anthony Waldron, Robert Rice, and Jaboury Ghazoul, “Conserving Biodiversity through Certification of Tropical Agroforestry Crops at Local and Landscape Scales,” Conservation Letters 8, no. 1 (2015): 14–23, doi:10.1111/conl.12110.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to E. Okumura, E. Garcia, C. Pereira, and J. Pereira for input on the sugarcane modeling; to L. Azevedo, J. Guimarães, K. Voss, I. Alameddine, S. Thompson, and B. Keeler for input on the hydrologic modeling; and to E. Lonsdorf and E. Nelson for input on the biodiversity and optimization modeling. Funding was provided by The Dow Chemical Company Foundation, The Dow Chemical Company, The Nature Conservancy, The Anne Ray Charitable Trust, and The 3M Foundation.
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Kennedy, C.M. et al. (2017). Biofuels Expansion and Environmental Quality in Brazil. In: Kiesecker, J.M., Naugle, D.E. (eds) Energy Sprawl Solutions. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-723-0_8
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