Trade-induced Environmental Impacts Connected to a Policy Promoting Agricultural Biofuels in Sweden; A sensitivity analysis on an Agent-based Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract: The demand for biofuels is increasing as a result of increased climate mitigation ambitions aiming to replace the use of fossil fuels. To meet the increasing demand, energy crops grown on agricultural land used to produce biofuels is getting more and more attention. Since agricultural land is a scarce resource, conflicts can arise between food production and biomass for biofuels, making it essential to understand the trade-offs of using agricultural land for biofuel supply such as the demand for import of food crops and outsourced environmental damages. In this study, a sensitivity analysis was conducted looking at the environmental impact from trade in the Agent-based life cycle assessment (AB-LCA) conducted by Raül López I Losada and his research team. The AB-LCA evaluates and compares the environmental impacts between two scenarios where a policy incentive replacing 25 percent of arable land with grass leys used for biofuel production is either present or absent. The sensitivity analysis in this study focused on evaluating how the environmental impact from trade concerning crop imports in López et al.’s study differs depending on the geographical region where the crops are produced, with the aim of testing the robustness of López et al.’s results. The sensitivity analysis showed that the environmental impacts from crops, measured in kg, vary substantially depending on the geographical location they origin from and which impact assessment method being used. However, when taking into account the volume of crops being imported, the result showed the same result as in López et al ́s study, that the presence of the policy incentive has greater environmental performance than the absence of it. Implementing similar policies promoting the production of biofuels on a broader scale needs to be thoughtfully understood due to the conflict-relationship between food security and bioenergy demand as well as the potential of causing indirect-land-use-changes outside of its boarders.