The Uncertain Future of Biofuels in China and the Impacts on the Food-Land-Water Nexus: A Multi-scale Analysis

With biofuel’s co-benefits of relieving dependence on fossil fuel and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it would be increasingly important to expand the consumption of biofuel in order to achieve sustainable development. By far, China has set up ambitious targets on improving its biofuel usage. However, considering future socio-economic development, impacts of biofuel expansion on China’s crop production and input use remains uncertain. To address this question with an integrated analytical framework, we developed the Simplified International Model of agricultural Prices, Land use and the Environment: Gridded version for China (SIMPLE-G-China), a partial equilibrium model following the global-local-global approach, to research the impact of biofuel demand on China’s crop production and inputs use. Based on simulations of four policy scenarios projecting to 2040, it is found that the increased demand of crop as food sector inputs and technology improvement are key factors for future crop production and input use in China, while impacts from biofuel expansion would be moderate. Also, the model shows the spatial variance of impacts on crop production, land and water use. Findings from this study would provide insights for government to formulate more efficient biofuel policies, improve policy assessment, and facilitate stakeholder’s decision making.