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Assessing the Climate Effects of Biofuels Using Integrated Assessment Models, Part I: Methodological Considerations
Author(s) -
Plevin Richard J.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of industrial ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.377
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1530-9290
pISSN - 1088-1980
DOI - 10.1111/jiec.12507
Subject(s) - biofuel , life cycle assessment , scope (computer science) , climate change , land use, land use change and forestry , product (mathematics) , corn ethanol , environmental science , environmental economics , production (economics) , computer science , land use , economics , engineering , ecology , mathematics , microeconomics , programming language , civil engineering , geometry , ethanol fuel , biology , waste management
Summary Estimates of the climate‐change mitigation benefits of biofuels are varied and controversial. Some analysts rely on attributional life cycle assessment (ALCA), limiting the analytic scope to the direct supply chain, whereas others supplement an ALCA result with an estimate of land‐use change (LUC) emissions intensity. Other analysts have used consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA), with methods ranging from static market assessments to identify the likely marginal product and supplier, to running partial and general equilibrium models to estimate changes in global production and consumption. In this article, we consider another alternative—using an integrated assessment model (IAM) as a platform for CLCA of biofuels. In this article (part I of II), we focus on the methodological challenges of this approach. In part II, we present a case study using one IAM—the global change assessment model (GCAM)—to estimate the climate effects of several biofuels.