Examination of existing iLUC approaches and application to bio-based materials
Creators: name: Diego Marazza, Eva Merloni
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2018
Subjects: Indirect land use change; biobased products; risk-based approach; literature review; indicators; parameters; risk factors

description: The Star-ProBio project aims at identifying and mitigating the risks of negative land use change (LUC) effects associated with production routes of bio-based products. WP7 and task 7.1, specifically, were assigned to the following tasks:


	Assessing the <em>status quo</em> and the key findings of existing approaches to quantify GHG emissions due to direct and indirect land use changes. This is done in order to: identify; categorize; and structure the key drivers and parameters for future strategies, with the final aim of reducing ILUC risks in a developing bio-based economy.
	Estimating the capacity of the existing models to cover bio-based materials and related feedstocks.
	Drawing links with standardisation work related to the sustainability of biofuels.
	Identifying potential additional key drivers from bioeconomy sectors not covered yet within the existing ILUC models such as cascading use.


Subtask a)-d) were performed accordingly through: <strong>literature review and search</strong>; selection and characterisation of key drivers and key parameters; search and comparison of current standardisation work; and formulation of a conceptual model to represent and hold together the selected results.

This deliverable provides indications about the capacity of the current agro-economic models to fit <strong>non-biofuel products</strong> and indicates <strong>limitations, caveats and the extent of adaptation</strong> of the methodology for bio-based products. It summarizes the <strong>key findings and drivers </strong>for ILUC caused by an increasing demand for bio-based products.

Bio-based products are made from raw biomass, ultimately deriving from land cultivation and often implying changes of use. LUC can be either <strong>direct (dLUC) or indirect (ILUC)</strong>. While dLUC can be modelled and measured through conventional and standardised life cycle assessment (LCA) - also known as attributional LCA, or ALCA – ILUC, governed by economic mechanisms, cannot be measured in accordance to current accepted standards.

ILUC approaches were formulated during the debate on biofuel impacts in the first decade of the 2000s and led to three main evaluation approaches:


	Economic models;
	Normative, ruled based methods ;
	Biophysical methods.


All approaches have been considered in the perspective of determining the contribution of bio-based products to cause or accelerate ILUC effects. In this context, WP7 participants established <strong>the link between key drivers of ILUC and standardisation work </strong>related to sustainability criteria for biofuels and biomaterials. Moreover, WP7 participants <strong>identified and categorized </strong>those <strong>key drivers and parameters </strong>involved in ILUC by paying particular attention on economic models and their structure.

No specific contributions on ILUC caused by non-fuel bio-based products have been detected, rather methodological frameworks have been proposed in connection with the life cycle assessment evaluation. The experts’ opinion ranges vary widely, from (a) the assumption that a deterministic approach is possible and replicable; and (b) the assumption that replicability is impossible, and, therefore, that no measure of ILUC should be accounted.

WP7 proposes to account for the ILUC effect together with the uncertainty related by shifting from a deterministic perspective to a <strong>risk-based approach.</strong> This is shown using a conceptual model to describe the ILUC process.

Specifically, the proposed conceptual model is composed of:


	an economic model to predict changes in demands of additional land;
	an economic-agronomic model explaining land use changes;
	a geographic-economic model accounting for the geographic distribution of effects at a planetary scale;
	an environmental model explaining impacts according to soil organics carbon levels, biodiversity and other land use or land cover original characteristics in the affected areas.


These layers can be thought similarly to IPCC <em>tiers</em>, where each tier represents a level of methodological complexity.

The conceptual model focuses on tiers I and II and aims at identifying the main risk factors. All risk factors depend on specific assumptions and conditions, such as crops, specific regional area and baseline values. Risk factors are placed both on the demand side of the economic system and on the supply side.

According to literature, the most representative factors affecting land consumption depend on (i) the sensitivity of domestic markets to price changes – i.e. <strong>demand elasticity</strong> - of the main raw biomass used in end-products; (ii)<strong> the intensive margin</strong>, which is the potential improvement of yield with respect to the yield in the baseline when crops and/or agricultural residues are used for bio-based products.

At a later stage, each risk factor will be assigned a weight and a risk value expressed as a range of differential hectares required. The final result would be an index measuring an ILUC risk on a qualitative base, such as “low-medium-high” or on a 1-to-5 scale.