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High oil prices, tight energy markets and evidence about the climate change are among the reasons for policy makers around the world to support the production and use of alternative, renewable energy sources in general, and bioenergy in particular. OECD work on bioenergy aims to provide policy makers with the necessary data and analyses to respond to the variety of objectives.
Growth in agricultural commodity use especially for biofuels, but also for heat and power generation, has begun to directly impact food markets, and the risk of trading food against fuels becomes increasingly prominent in the public discussion. At the same time, the contributions to energy security, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and other objectives, that today’s use of agricultural commodities for bioenergy can make, are questioned. Given the high costs to consumers as well as to public budgets of both food and energy, it is important to understand the links between alternative policy measures, the production and use of bioenergy, the stated objectives and agricultural markets.
As the topic touches various areas, ranging from scientific developments to environmental effects to energy balances to agricultural market economics, OECD has launched an overarching research program in an interdisciplinary manner. Lead by the Trade and Agriculture Directorate it incorporates expertise from a number of other directorates of the Organisation, the International Energy Agency as well as from other institutions and researchers.
The work on bioenergy focuses on both a comprehensive compilation of data and information on the issue, the categorization of the variety of support policies, and the quantitative analysis of bioenergy policy measures. The analytical basis for the work is provided by the OECD’s agricultural world market model Aglink, which in recent years has been complemented with the FAO’s Cosimo model to represent developing countries in greater detail. The quantitative work allows, in a forward-looking manner, to analyse the implications of current and alternative policy schemes on both bioenergy and agricultural markets which are subject to further evaluations of environmental and other indirect effects.
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