{"id":34206,"date":"2023-06-27T10:27:41","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T09:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=34206"},"modified":"2025-01-22T13:20:19","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T13:20:19","slug":"are-emissions-from-biofuels-as-bad-as-diesel-and-petrol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/are-emissions-from-biofuels-as-bad-as-diesel-and-petrol\/34206\/","title":{"rendered":"Are emissions from biofuels as bad as diesel and petrol?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Demand for biofuels is expected to rapidly grow to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions.<\/p>\n
However, researchers have argued that they are far from being a carbon-neutral alternative to diesel and petrol.<\/p>\n
In a new study, led by an expert team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), it has been revealed that emissions from biofuels might exceed those of fossil fuel combustion. This is due to large-scale land clearing related to growing biomass.<\/p>\n
Before bioenergy can contribute towards climate-related goals, the team has argued that international agreements must ensure the protection of forests and other natural lands by introducing carbon pricing.<\/p>\n
The study, \u2018Bioenergy-induced land-use-change emissions with sectorally fragmented policies<\/a>,\u2019 is published in the journal Nature Climate Change. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOur results show: The state of current global land regulation is inadequate to control land-use-change emissions from modern biofuels,\u201d lead author Leon Merfort explained.<\/p>\n \u201cIf cultivation for bioenergy grasses is not strictly limited to marginal or abandoned land, food production could shift and agricultural land use<\/a> expand into natural land. This would cause substantial carbon dioxide emissions due to forest clearing in regions with weak or no land regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n The indirect effects of bioenergy use are a challenge for policymakers. This is because food an bioenergy markets are globally connected but beyond the control of individual national policies.<\/p>\n The regulatory gap in the land-use sector keeps the bioenergy supply cheap.<\/p>\n However, this gap is also pushing the energy sector to phase out fossil fuels even faster to compensate for land-use change. This spiral increases the demand for bioenergy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe find that without additional land-use regulation, land clearing related to the production of modern biofuels results in CO2<\/sub> emission factors – averaged over a 30-year period – that are higher than those from burning fossil diesel,\u201d co-author Florian Humpen\u00f6der said.<\/p>\n These results emphasise the need for a shift in land-use policy.<\/p>\nEmissions from biofuels could rise without global land regulation<\/h3>\n
Pricing emissions from land-use change<\/h3>\n