​PUBLICATION - Food, biofuels and the environment: Is there a virtuous path for the EU?​

Congratulations to Erica Ramirez from CEA I-Tésé, and her co-authors Eva Gossiaux from Paris School of Economics and Pierre-Alain Jayet from INRAE on the publication of their article "Food, biofuels and the environment: Is there a virtuous path for the EU?" in the journal Biomass and Bioenergy.


💡 Context
Energy and food security challenges call for reconsidering interactions within the food-feed-fuel-environment nexus. Using an agricultural supply-side model, they assess the capacity of EU-28 agriculture to jointly increase food calorie and advanced biofuel production and examine the associated environmental impacts.

They characterize a two-dimensional food-biofuel production set under the economic and technical conditions of the 2010s. Biofuel potential is derived from crop residues and dedicated perennial crops and expressed as farm-gate equivalent biofuel.


🔍Results
Considered separately, food calorie production could rise by a factor of 2.5, and the advanced biofuel potential could reach 2.5 EJ per year, about 20% of current EU road and aviation fuel demand. They identify a compatibility corridor, characterized by implicit price ratios associated with the food and biofuel constraints, along which both outputs can increase jointly, up to 2 EJ of biofuel supply, while reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Achieving such outcomes, however, requires substantial structural and spatial changes in agricultural land allocation, particularly a marked reduction in livestock production and associated feed demand.


👉 Read the article: https://bit.ly/4dDk07j

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