Spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity loss due to different bioenergy policies in the European Union

Abstract

The demand for bioenergy is expected to increase rapidly in the EU, driven by policies aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through bioenergy. The downside of the increased use of bioenergy is the risk to biodiversity and ecosystem services, both within the EU but also outside the EU borders through indirect effects.

Our study provides a spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity losses from land use, land-use change, and forestry under three different EU bioenergy policy scenarios in the detail of NUTS2 administrative units. The study combined methodologies for biodiversity impact assessment with a global high resolution economic land use model GLOBIOM. Potential loss of global species (PSLglo) was used as an indicator for biodiversity damage, and species loss was quantified using the countryside species area-relationships model (SARs).

The Constant demand (CONST), the Baseline (BASE), and the Emission Reduction (EMIRED) scenarios were used for depicting different future biomass demands. All scenarios had similar biomass demand until 2020 but different targets afterwards, from keeping the demand for bioenergy constant (CONST) to a strong increase of bioenergy aiming to decrease GHG emissions by 80% in 2050 (EMIRED) and with the BASE scenario falling in between the other two.

The total global biodiversity loss due to EU land use and related changes in net imports was found to reach 1% in 2050 in the BASE scenario. The biodiversity impacts were found to vary only little between the scenarios but instead increase considerably over time in all scenarios, due to increased bioenergy and food demand. The damage was found to increase by 26% from year 2000 to 2050 in the BASE scenario. The difference between scenarios increased over time and in the year 2050 impacts for the EMIRED are 2% larger than in the BASE, meanwhile in the CONST scenario, they are 1.7% lower than in the BASE. The land-use induced impacts on biodiversity were amplified in southern Europe, where the ecoregions are hosting more biodiversity than in the north. In all scenarios, the relative share of indirect impacts through EU imports is expected to increase over time. Imports accounted for 15% of total impacts in the year 2000, and increased to 24-26% in 2050, meaning that relatively more damage would be outsourced by the EU in the future.

The main drivers of the direct damage for biodiversity were the increased amount of land used for perennial energy crops and the increased use of forests for biomass supply, while the indirect damage was driven by the increase of agricultural products imports. The expansion of perennial energy crops on agricultural cropland in the EU (especially in the EMIRED scenario) was found to outsource damage elsewhere, as agricultural products would then be increasingly imported from outside EU, partly from regions rich in biodiversity and hosting vulnerable species.

This work is part of the Sumforest project Future BioEcon.