生物燃料经济学.pdf

Biofuel and the new economics of agriculture David Zilberman Deepak Rajagopal Steven Sexton Gal Hochman Presented at Farm foundation Workshop Berkeley July 28 2008 Agricultural and Resource Economics | UC Berkeley Why Biofuel ? • Increase in demand for fuel ▫ 18 cars/1000 people in China vs. 800 in US ▫ Tata’s Nano car • Constrained supply of oil ▫ Tar sands, CTLs have their own problem • Concern about climate change • Limited capacity to induce conservation (minimal support for carbon tax, CAFÉ and LCFS have limited capacity for change) • Biofuel are not new- take advantage of human skill -farming Biofuel And the Food Market-short term analysis Market for Food and Energy Crops $ $ Food Demand Joint Demand Supply Supply w/ GMO Biofuel Demand Crop Quantity Ag Expansion Quantity The Basic Economics of Biofuel • Introduction of Biofuels: ▫ Increased food prices; and ▫ Reduces food availability • The effects can be countered by: ▫ Increased agricultural and conversion productivity ▫ Second generation biofuels ▫Ag Biotech Boom/bust and subsidies • Food Crop biofuels are viable economically when food prices are low and fuel prices are high • Subsidies always help… • Higher energy prices in the 2000s combined with subsidies and low food prices made biofuel profitable • Recent increases in corn price – led to big loses to corn biofuel processors Impact of biofuel based on 2007-back of envelope calculations • Biofuels replaced 1- 2% of liquid fuels • Reduce prices by 2-4% • Saved consumers globally up to $60 billion • About 12% of the corn output was in biof