Economic, Energy Security, and Greenhouse Gas Effects of Biofuels: Implications for Policy

摘要

Biofuels are being promoted by governments around the world to reduce dependence on oil imports, mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and spur domestic economic development. Biofuels currently being consumed in the United States are produced domestically from food crops, such as corn and soybeans. The United States also imports sugarcane ethanol from Brazil. The quantity of corn ethanol produced in the United States has gone up from 0.6 billion gallons (B gallons) in 1985 to 13.9 B gallons in 2011, consuming 40% of the U.S. corn production. A key policy to induce biofuel production in the United States is the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) that imposes annual requirements for different categories of biofuels to be produced, including from corn and sugarcane and from a range of cellulosic feedstocks such as crop and forest residues and perennial energy crops, like switchgrass and miscanthus. Until recently, other policies, such as a tax credit for corn ethanol and an import tariff, had also beendeployed to support domestic ethanol; tax credits are currently limited to cellulosic biofuels and biodiesel only. Due to high costs of production, commercial production of cellulosic biofuels has been delayed and requires waivers of the RFS; productionis anticipated to start in 2015 with the EIA (2010) forecasting aggregate annual biofuel volume reaching 39 B gallons by 2035.