ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGY: CASE STUDIES

 

 

Session 2A3

A SIMULATION STUDY ON BIOENERGY POTENTIAL WITH A GLOBAL LAND USE AND ENERGY MODEL

Room

Hiromi Yamamoto (Central Research Institute of Eletric Power Industry), Junichi Fujino (The University of Tokyo), Kenji Yamaji (The University of Tokyo)

 

Bioenergy is expected to become one of the key energy resources for global sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to evaluate global and regional bioenergy potential. The authors analyzed the relations between biomass consumption per capita and GDPppp per capita regionally, and set long-term biomass demand scenarios. The biomass demand was divided into five kinds: timber, paper, traditional fuelwood, vegetable food, and animal food. The authors used the biomass demand scenarios and the global land use and energy model with eleven world regions (GLUE-11) in order to evaluate bioenergy potential. GLUE-11 covers a wide range of land uses and biomass flow including food and material chains and recycling process of paper and timber wastes. Through a set of simulations the following results were obtained. (1) The global potential of energy crops from surplus arable land will be strongly affected by even regional biomass demand scenario. (2) The energy potential of biomass residues will be large in North America, Centrally Planed Asia, and South Asia which will be large producers of not only roundwood and cereals but also these residues. The energy potential of biomass residues in the world will increase from 81EJ/year in 1990 to 270 EJ/year in 2100 with the increase of biomass demand.