Biofuels and corresponding land use trade-offs from a German perspective

The land use debate surrounding the expansion of biofuels has seen many heated debates, with many questioning the validity of such alternative energy sources. Indeed the potential influence which bioenergy policies could have on both the environment and biomass availability for food, feed, and fibre nationally and internationally became a bone of contention for many. To support policy makers’ knowledge and understanding of the possible consequences for such cross cutting policy requires approaches from different scientific disciplines in the form of integrated assessment frameworks (Thrän et al., 2016). Such assessments require a multi scale approach, from international and national scales, to regional scales and also to individual plant level scale.
The “MILESTONES” is the first integrative approach which models the links between the German national bioenergy system and the global land-use system. It combines (1) the global economic equilibrium model “MAGNET” to describe international markets and trade, (2) the grid-based global land-use model “LandSHIFT” to determine the location and extent of global land-use change, and (3) the bioenergy market model “BENSIM” to simulate the competition between bioenergy options at the national level in Germany (Millinger & Thrän). The model framework illustrates the potential consequences of German bioenergy policies and regulations in much greater detail, as it also considers cross-scale dependencies between the German bioenergy system and the international biomass trade. The results from the case study show that German biofuel strategies have little effect on international market prices and that land-use policy on an international level greatly influences the environmental performance of any German bioenergy strategy (Thrän et al., 2016).
Regional land use and its management can have a large effect on the GHG mitigation performance of a biofuel. With the Regional Life Cycle inventory Assessment (RELCA) approach (O’Keeffe et al., 2016), the interaction between regional land use, management and conversion to bioenergy was modelled. We found that the configurations of both biomass and conversion plants need to be assessed, in order to develop the most appropriate GHG mitigation strategies. However, for more spatially targeting GHG accounting to work, sustainability certification should also be expanded to other biomass markets (O'Keeffe et al.).
Going forward, in order to ensure sustainable energy security, indicators are required for assessing the potential trade-offs between conflicting energy uses, land uses and ecological impacts. Therefore, the project “EE-Monitor” (Renewable-Energies-Monitoring) aims to develop a monitoring programme for Germany to assess with a suite of informative indicators the potential impacts of renewable energy technologies, such as biogas, wind power, photovoltaic and hydropower on ecosystems and their Services.