The Land Use Impacts of the EUBiodiesel Policy: Assessing the Direct, Indirect and Induced Effects
Résumé
This paper deals with the controversial measure of indirect land use changes of theEuropean biodiesel policy. Two studies sponsored by the European Commissionfind significant, but contrasted, land use impacts for the different vegetable oilsused for biodiesel production. The first study uses an aggregate computable generalequilibrium model capturing direct, indirect and induced effects. The second morerecent study uses a biotechnical partial equilibrium model providing a detailed rep-resentation of the indirect effects occurring through the livestock sectors. Wedevelop an original economic emulator to understand the diverging key results ofthese studies and test their sensitivity. We find that the direct and indirect effectson vegetable oil and land markets explain most of the differences. We also find thatindirect effects on the feed markets and the induced effects have less influence onthe biodiesel results. We finally argue that the development of emulators as donehere can help to understand complex policy assessments.