Module 2: Renewable Energy, Climate Change and Food Security:
Assessment of the indirect land use change (ILUC) risk from major oil crops using the attributive land use change concept (aLULUC)
Dr. Guido Reinhardt
Dr. Guido Reinhardt is a member of the board of directors of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Heidelberg, Germany, IFEU, and scientific director of the department of ‘Sustainability of renewable energies and biobased systems’. Since he joined IFEU in 1991, he has been working in the fields of life cycle assessment (LCA) and integrated life cycle sustainability assessment (ILCSA) of food, bioenergy, industrial crops, biobased materials. He has a broad experience in the acquisition and coordination of large-scale projects. Guido is a consultant for national and international institutions such as EC, IEA, UNEP, UNIDO, FAO etc and a member of several advisory panels. He published several books and hundreds of publications and expertises about the topic mentioned.
Over the last 15 years, many studies have been published on the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon footprint of palm oil. Different methodological approaches were used, in particular to account for GHG emissions from land use (LU) and land use change (LUC). In Europe, there has been a heated debate for many years with a focus on direct and indirect land use change (dLUC / iLUC) resulting from oil crops that are used for biofuels and also for food products.
There is no doubt that the GHG emissions from land use are significant and must be taken into account. A novel scientific approach presented here is the attributional land use and land use change (aLULUC). It is based on the principle that the current actual conditions of land use change and the associated GHG emissions in a specific country are equally attributed to all its agricultural products. It implicitly covers potential indirect land use changes. Thus, the aLULUC approach represents a significant improvement in the iLUC debate since it does not depend on theoretically modelling of iLUC emissions, but uses the actual emissions of recent years instead.
The presentation provides an introduction into the methodological approach of the aLULUC concept in contrast to the dLUC and iLUC approach and presents results for five major vegetable oils, namely rape seed oil, canola oil, soy oil, sunflower oil and palm oil, followed by conclusions and recommendations.
REGISTER OR LOGIN TO VIEW FULL REPORT
REGISTER OR LOGIN TO VIEW PRESENTATION SLIDES