Discussion Topic 6: Introduction by Jeremy Woods

1. Cross-cutting issues
biofuels and food security
Jeremy Woods (Imperial College London / Climate-KIC)
&
Glaucia da Souza (University of São Paulo & SCOPE Bioenergy)
IFPRI, Washington DC, 20th November 2014

2. Energy Security
Biofuels and Food Security – ‘a wicked problem?’
Environmental
(e.g. Climate Change,
soils, water, air)
Development &
Governance
Availability
Access
Foodsecurity
Food Security
Usability
(safety &
nutrition)
Stability
Cross-cutting

3. SYSTEM DYNAMICS OF THE ‘THREE RESPONSES’ OF FOSSIL FUEL
SYSTEMS TO RENEWABLE ENERGY (FOSTER, 2014)

4. Sustainable intensification of the food system
(Garnett & Godfray, 2012)

5. Climate impacts on crop yields
(World Bank 2010)

6. Climate Change and future crop yields
(IPCC WG2 SPM, 2014)

7. Area 25 – food & energy market, Lilongwe, July
2014

8. International groundnut market

9. Complexity as an opportunity
• Different tools for different scales (local, international, global)
• Different tools / approaches for different land types / areas
• Different tools / instruments / approaches for different places,
cultures, people
• Need to think across temporal and spatial scales and actively
seek resilient integrational outcomes
Complexity is both the biggest obstacle but also the biggest
opportunity for bioenergy. Do we have the human ingenuity to
make it work?

10. Thank you from the Ntchisi

11. Key cross-cutting questions
Important questions that need to be addressed by research and which are
indicative of the complex interactions between bioenergy and food production
include:
• What is the potential for diversifying value streams, market substitutions,
implicit investment risks and the interactions with food production?
• How can the integration of biofuels within food supply systems affect food
security?
• The global food system needs to respond to climate change through both
mitigation and adaptation; what are the implications of significant levels of
bioenergy deployment on these response options?
• What role do productivity improvements play in creating stronger
synergies?
• Can bioenergy be deployed in ways that enhances rather than degrades
the resilience of the global food (production and consumption) system? If
so, how can this be achieved and how likely is it that good outcomes will
arise?

12. Key cross-cutting questions
In this topical theme, we raise a number of important questions that need to
be addressed by research and which are indicative of the complex
interactions between bioenergy and food production including:
• How can the integration of biofuels within food supply systems affect
food security?
• What role do productivity improvements play in creating stronger
synergies?
• Can bioenergy be deployed in ways that enhances rather than degrades
the resilience of the global food (production and consumption) system? If
so, how can this be achieved and how likely is it that good outcomes will
arise?

13. Key cross-cutting questions: Economic
• Will biofuels be competitive with conventional energy
sources?
• Set a global price ceiling e.g. for oil / other
renewables? (see Foster, 2014)
• Will biofuels compete with food production?
• What is the potential for diversifying value streams,
market substitutions, implicit investment risks and
the interactions with food production?
• Impacts on input prices?
• Floor price for commodity crops?
• Impacts on crop yields?
• Land demand & rents?
• Impacts on food price volatility

14. Key cross-cutting questions: Environmental
• Climate change- mitigation and adaptation
• Impacts on water
• Availability
• Quality
• hydrology,
• Impacts on land and soils
• land use change
• erosion,
• soil organic matter,
• biodiversity,
• carbon stocks,
• nutrient and water holding capacities
• toxicity (e.g. ash disposal)
• Air quality
• Invasive species
• GMOs
• … many more ….

15. Delivering
Public goods
• Can perennial crops be
deployed to deliver public
goods
• Satellite view of sediment
plumes during winter /
spring flooding in UK
(April/May 2014)
• September 2014 – driest
September on record

16. Key cross-cutting questions: Social & Governance
• Impacts on jobs / job quality
• Rural development vs urbanisation
• Impacts on literacy and schooling
• Health & welfare
• Governance and regulation
• Assurance and certification
• Monitoring and measurement
• Climate smart agriculture
• Issues of scale (production, conversion, national to
global market share)
• Sustainable development goals (equity, aspiration)
• Issues of ‘scale’

17. Multiple ‘models’ are possible:
Issues of scale: Bioenergy Development Options
Large Scale
1. Sugarcane to EtOH
2. Palm / Soy Biodiesel
Mill-owned
estate
Very competitive
globally
Little Value
Added to Local
Communities
Export potential
Small-holder
led
Higher cost base
Less globally
competitive
High Value
Added to
Local
Communities
Export potential
Community-level
winners and
losers
Small Scale
1. Sweet Sorghum – micro-distillery
2. Woodlot gasification elec. (Hosahali)
Multi-product
cropping
e.g. sweet sorghum
Economics
Uncertain
Complex-
Value Added to
Local
Communities
High risk
Local Markets
Social Issues
Crop not well
characterised
Single
Bioenergy
Product
e.g. multi-species
woodlot
Value Added
to Local
Communities
High Risk
Complex food-
fuel-cash-crop
interactions
Integration &
transition

18. 18
Sarah Best
30th April 2014
Sarah Best ‘Growing Power: Exploring Energy Needs
in Smallholder Agriculture’ IIED, 2014
What’s the issue? (a) Food for all implies more modern energy and
equipment in food system
Clarke, 2008. http://www.raeng.org.uk/events/pdf/252/lawrence_clarke.pdf

19. SUSTAINABLE
INTENSIFICATION
Integration & complexity (friend or foe?)

20. The Global Calculator Land Use Change (A. Strapasson, 2014 PhD thesis)
Integrated systems perspectives
Dynamics of bioenergy, residues and wastes in the global calculator model

21. Land, Food and Bioenergy Interactions – driver tree
The Global Calculator
Food demand is always provided for in the global calculator model

22. Level 1: Mismanaged land use. It assumes that 10% more agricultural land would be
necessary to attain the selected food/livestock/bioenergy productions.
Level 2: Current world pattern of agricultural system stabilised until 2050 (no change from
2011).
Level 3: 10% less agricultural land is necessary to attain the selected
food/livestock/bioenergy productions.
Level 4: 30% less agricultural land would be necessary to attend the selected
food/livestock/bioenergy productions.
Land-use efficiency (land integration)

23. Integration through improved use of
wastes and residues

24. Level 1: Assumes no increase in the production and collection of on-farm residues; and no increase in
the production of post-farm wastes and residues, but with a low increase in their collection for energy
and feed.
Level 2: Moderate increase in the collection of on-farm residues. It also assumes a reduction in the
production of post-farm residues and wastes and moderate increase in collection for energy and feed.
Level 3: High collection of on-farm residues for energy and feed, as well as reduction in the
production of post-farm wastes and residues, and increase in their collection.
Level 4: Extreme collection of on-farm residues for energy and feed, as well as substantial reduction
in the production of post-farm wastes and residues, and increase in their collection.
Wastes and Residues

25. Simplified relation of food prices to bioenergy
(SCOPE Chapter 4, Bioenergy & Food Security)

26. Summary
• Understanding, monitoring and managing complex,
highly interlinked systems- perfect outcomes are
extremely unlikely
– Beware over-regulation
– Life Cycle Assessment (attributional and consequential) is
still a young ‘science’
• Assigning causality for impacts and allocating to co-
products
• Beware of burden shifting / gaming
• Rewarding ‘co-benefits’ of integration, including
enhanced resilience

27. Global
Calculator
Interactions between sectors (the whole
picture) – energy, food, land …
‘Political tensions and high prices from Gazprom are driving shifts that suggest Moscow
does not hold all the cards
Pressure points: a worker on the Nord Stream project supplying Russian gas to Germany
The night shift at Agropolychim, Bulgaria’s biggest fertiliser plant, received a fax at
4.30am on January 6 2009 warning that their gas supply was going to be cut off
immediately. The engineers demanded four more hours: an instant shutdown would
leave a cocktail of explosive chemicals to congeal in the plant’s pipes, destroying vital
equipment. “It was all hands on deck,” recalls Philippe Rombaut.
…
Mr Rombaut’s plans at Agropolychim show that Moscow does not hold all the cards. Next
year, he will switch from gas to biomass, running on straw and woodchips. That is
highly significant for Gazprom because Agropolychim and Neochim, Bulgaria’s leading
fertiliser plants, jointly consume about 25 per cent of the country’s gas.’
Can Europe wean itself off Russian gas?
By Christian Oliver and Henry Foy
The Financial Times (Print Edition, 14th October 2014)