Bioenergy Economics and Policy: Introduction and Overview

Concerns about energy security, high oil prices, declining oil reserves, and global climate change are fuelling a shift towards bioenergy as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels. Public policies and private investments around the globe are aiming to increase national capacities to produce biofuels. A key constraint to the expansion of biofuel production is the limited amount of land available to meet the needs for fuel, feed, and food in the coming decades. Large-scale biofuel production raises concerns about food versus fuel trade-offs, demands for natural resources such as water, and its potential impacts on environmental quality. Policies to support biofuel production have distributional implications for consumers and producers, farm and nonfarm sectors, global trade in food and biofuels, and the price of land and other scarce resources.