IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v37y2009i8p2839-2841.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are forestation, bio-char and landfilled biomass adequate offsets for the climate effects of burning fossil fuels?

Author

Listed:
  • Reijnders, L.

Abstract

Forestation and landfilling purpose-grown biomass are not adequate offsets for the CO2 emission from burning fossil fuels. Their permanence is insufficiently guaranteed and landfilling purpose-grown biomass may even be counterproductive. As to permanence, bio-char may do better than forests or landfilled biomass, but there are major uncertainties about net greenhouse gas emissions linked to the bio-char life cycle, which necessitate suspension of judgement about the adequacy of bio-char addition to soils as an offset for CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Suggested Citation

  • Reijnders, L., 2009. "Are forestation, bio-char and landfilled biomass adequate offsets for the climate effects of burning fossil fuels?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2839-2841, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:37:y:2009:i:8:p:2839-2841
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(09)00214-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Themelis, Nickolas J. & Ulloa, Priscilla A., 2007. "Methane generation in landfills," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1243-1257.
    2. van Kooten, G. Cornelis, 2008. "A Perspective on Carbon Sequestration as a Strategy for Mitigating Climate Change," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 23(1), pages 1-4.
    3. Brian C. Murray & Bruce A. McCarl & Heng-Chi Lee, 2004. "Estimating Leakage from Forest Carbon Sequestration Programs," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 80(1), pages 109-124.
    4. Johannes Lehmann & John Gaunt & Marco Rondon, 2006. "Bio-char Sequestration in Terrestrial Ecosystems – A Review," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 395-419, March.
    5. Searchinger, Timothy & Heimlich, Ralph & Houghton, R. A. & Dong, Fengxia & Elobeid, Amani & Fabiosa, Jacinto F. & Tokgoz, Simla & Hayes, Dermot J. & Yu, Hun-Hsiang, 2008. "Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change," Staff General Research Papers Archive 12881, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    6. Saunders, Harry D., 2008. "Virtual biofuels--A cheaper, better, faster alternative?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1247-1250, April.
    7. Mathews, John A., 2008. "Carbon-negative biofuels," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 940-945, March.
    8. Ralph Alig & Darius Adams & Bruce McCarl & J. Callaway & Steven Winnett, 1997. "Assessing effects of mitigation strategies for global climate change with an intertemporal model of the U.S. forest and agriculture sectors," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 9(3), pages 259-274, April.
    9. Jayant Sathaye & Kenneth Andrasko, 2007. "Special issue on estimation of baselines and leakage in carbon mitigation forestry projects," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 12(6), pages 963-970, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brennan, Liam & Owende, Philip, 2010. "Biofuels from microalgae--A review of technologies for production, processing, and extractions of biofuels and co-products," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 557-577, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. McCarl, Bruce A. & Attavanich, Witsanu & Musumba, Mark & Mu, Jianhong E. & Aisabokhae, Ruth, 2011. "Land Use and Climate Change," MPRA Paper 83993, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2014.
    2. Suopajärvi, Hannu & Pongrácz, Eva & Fabritius, Timo, 2013. "The potential of using biomass-based reducing agents in the blast furnace: A review of thermochemical conversion technologies and assessments related to sustainability," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 511-528.
    3. Szulczyk, Kenneth R. & McCarl, Bruce A. & Cornforth, Gerald, 2010. "Market penetration of ethanol," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 394-403, January.
    4. Dumortier, Jerome & Elobeid, Amani, 2021. "Effects of a carbon tax in the United States on agricultural markets and carbon emissions from land-use change," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    5. Kung, Chih-Chun & Lan, Xiaolong & Yang, Yunxia & Kung, Shan-Shan & Chang, Meng-Shiuh, 2022. "Effects of green bonds on Taiwan's bioenergy development," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 238(PA).
    6. Jianbang Gan, 2006. "International Trade and Forest Conservation Leakage," EcoMod2006 272100030, EcoMod.
    7. Onno Kuik, 2014. "REDD+ and international leakage via food and timber markets: a CGE analysis," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 19(6), pages 641-655, August.
    8. Heng-Chi Lee & Bruce McCarl & Uwe Schneider & Chi-Chung Chen, 2007. "Leakage and Comparative Advantage Implications of Agricultural Participation in Greenhouse Gas Emission Mitigation," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 471-494, May.
    9. Kauffman, Nathan & Dumortier, Jerome & Hayes, Dermot J. & Brown, Robert C. & Laird, David, 2014. "Producing energy while sequestering carbon? The relationship between biochar and agricultural productivity," ISU General Staff Papers 201404010700001488, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    10. Galinato, Suzette P. & Yoder, Jonathan K. & Granatstein, David, 2011. "The economic value of biochar in crop production and carbon sequestration," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 6344-6350, October.
    11. Kung, Chih-Chun & Zhang, Liguo & Kong, Fanbin, 2016. "How government subsidy leads to sustainable bioenergy development," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 275-284.
    12. Kim, Man-Keun & Peralta, Denis & McCarl, Bruce A., 2014. "Land-based greenhouse gas emission offset and leakage discounting," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 265-273.
    13. Bento, Antonio M. & Klotz, Richard & Landry, Joel R., 2011. "Are there Carbon Savings from US Biofuel Policies? Accounting for Leakage in Land and Fuel Markets," 2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, 2011, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 104008, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    14. Gan, Jianbang & McCarl, Bruce A., 2007. "Measuring transnational leakage of forest conservation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 423-432, December.
    15. Lal, R., 2011. "Sequestering carbon in soils of agro-ecosystems," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(S1), pages 33-39.
    16. Kung, Chih-Chun & Zhang, Ning, 2015. "Renewable energy from pyrolysis using crops and agricultural residuals: An economic and environmental evaluation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 90(P2), pages 1532-1544.
    17. Lubowski, Ruben N. & Plantinga, Andrew J. & Stavins, Robert N., 2006. "Land-use change and carbon sinks: Econometric estimation of the carbon sequestration supply function," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 135-152, March.
    18. Brennan, Liam & Owende, Philip, 2010. "Biofuels from microalgae--A review of technologies for production, processing, and extractions of biofuels and co-products," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 557-577, February.
    19. Su, Guangcan & Mohd Zulkifli, Nurin Wahidah & Ong, Hwai Chyuan & Ibrahim, Shaliza & Bu, Quan & Zhu, Ruonan, 2022. "Pyrolysis of oil palm wastes for bioenergy in Malaysia: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    20. Otto, Sander A.C. & Gernaat, David E.H.J. & Isaac, Morna & Lucas, Paul L. & van Sluisveld, Mariësse A.E. & van den Berg, Maarten & van Vliet, Jasper & van Vuuren, Detlef P., 2015. "Impact of fragmented emission reduction regimes on the energy market and on CO2 emissions related to land use: A case study with China and the European Union as first movers," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 90(PA), pages 220-229.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:37:y:2009:i:8:p:2839-2841. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.