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Greenhouse-gas payback times for crop-based biofuels

Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 604–610 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

A global increase in the demand for crop-based biofuels may be met by cropland expansion, and could require the sacrifice of natural vegetation. Such land transformation alters the carbon and nitrogen cycles of the original system, and causes significant greenhouse-gas emissions, which should be considered when assessing the global warming performance of crop-based biofuels. As an indicator of this performance we propose the use of greenhouse-gas payback time (GPBT), that is, the number of years it takes before the greenhouse-gas savings due to displacing fossil fuels with biofuels equal the initial losses of carbon and nitrogen stocks from the original ecosystem. Spatially explicit global GPBTs were derived for biofuel production systems using five different feedstocks (corn, rapeseed, soybean, sugarcane and winter wheat), cultivated under no-input and high-input farm management. Overall, GPBTs were found to range between 1 and 162 years (95% range, median: 19 years) with the longest GPBTs occurring in the tropics. Replacing no-input with high-input farming typically shortened the GPBTs by 45 to 79%. Location of crop cultivation was identified as the primary factor driving variation in GPBTs. This study underscores the importance of using spatially explicit impact assessments to guide biofuel policy.

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Figure 1: Global maps of GPBTs for the five bioenergy crops under no-input and high-input farm management.
Figure 2: Histograms of ΔGPBT showing the change in payback times when converting no-input farming to high-input farming of the same feedstock crop.
Figure 3: Histograms of the GPBTs for the five energy crops under no-input and high-input farm management.

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Acknowledgements

The research was partly financially supported by three projects of the European Commission under the 7th framework program for the environment, ENV.2012.6.3-3: DESIRE—DEvelopment of a System of Indicators for a Resource efficient Europe, grant agreement 308552; ENV.2008.3.3.2.1: PROSUITE—Sustainability Assessment of Technologies, grant agreement 227078; and ENV. 2009.3.3.2.1: LC-IMPACT—Improved Life Cycle Impact Assessment methods (LCIA) for better sustainability assessment of technologies, grant agreement 243827. M.A.J.H. was further financially supported by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment RIVM-project S/607020, Measurably Sustainable within the spearhead Healthy and Sustainable Living Environment, commissioned by the Director-General of RIVM and run under the auspices of RIVM’s Science Advisory Board.

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  1. M. van der Velde

    Present address: Present address: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, 21027 Ispra, Italy.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science, Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Water and Wetland Research, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    P. M. F. Elshout, R. van Zelm & M. A. J. Huijbregts

  2. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Ecosystems Services & Management Program, Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria,

    J. Balkovic, M. Obersteiner, R. Skalsky & M. van der Velde

  3. Department of Soil Science, Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Natural Sciences, 842 15 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

    J. Balkovic

  4. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Institute for Sustainable Economic Development, Feistmantelstrasse 4, A-1180 Vienna, Austria,

    E. Schmid

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Contributions

P.M.F.E., R.v.Z., M.v.d.V., M.O. and M.A.J.H. developed the methodological framework; E.S. performed the EPIC model simulations; M.v.d.V., J.B. and R.S. performed the post-processing of the simulation results; P.M.F.E. performed the GPBT calculations and statistical analyses; and all contributed to the writing of the paper.

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Correspondence to P. M. F. Elshout.

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Elshout, P., van Zelm, R., Balkovic, J. et al. Greenhouse-gas payback times for crop-based biofuels. Nature Clim Change 5, 604–610 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2642

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