IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/engenv/v25y2014i1p13-39.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Environmental Impact and Energy Production: Evaluation of Biochar Application on Taiwanese Set-Aside Land

Author

Listed:
  • Chih-Chun Kung
  • Bruce A. McCarl
  • Chi-Chung Chen
  • Xiaoyong Cao

Abstract

Taiwan imports more than 99% of her energy and suffers from climate change effects such as rising ocean level. Therefore, energy insecurity and GHG emissions offset are two serious problems facing Taiwan. This paper examines the possibilities for domestic bioenergy production in Taiwan utilizing set-aside land. Three bioenergy alternatives are examined: Pyrolysis-based bioelectricity, conventional bioelectricity and ethanol. We examine the comparative economics and choices among these alternatives under current Taiwanese agricultural system policies and also under altered energy and greenhouse gas/carbon prices. Biochar, produced from pyrolysis, is also investigated for different uses: whether it is best used as an energy source and/or a soil amendment. The study employs modified Taiwanese Agricultural Sector Model (TASM) to simulate the effects of the alternatives in the face of energy and greenhouse gases prices. Results show that ethanol production is chosen under current conditions but that this is replaced by pyrolysis-based bioelectricity when the GHG price is high. The results also indicate that Taiwan's energy security can be enhanced by domestic bioenergy production and up to1.59% of total GHG emissions can be offset.

Suggested Citation

  • Chih-Chun Kung & Bruce A. McCarl & Chi-Chung Chen & Xiaoyong Cao, 2014. "Environmental Impact and Energy Production: Evaluation of Biochar Application on Taiwanese Set-Aside Land," Energy & Environment, , vol. 25(1), pages 13-39, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:engenv:v:25:y:2014:i:1:p:13-39
    DOI: 10.1260/0958-305X.25.1.13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1260/0958-305X.25.1.13
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1260/0958-305X.25.1.13?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Darius M. Adams & Ralph J. Alig & DBruce A. McCarl & John M. Callaway & Steven M. Winnett, 1999. "Minimum Cost Strategies for Sequestering Carbon in Forests," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 75(3), pages 360-374.
    2. Ching-Cheng Chang & Bruce A. McCarl & James W. Mjelde & James W. Richardson, 1992. "Sectoral Implications of Farm Program Modifications," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 74(1), pages 38-49.
    3. Bruce A. McCarl, 2008. "Food, Biofuel, Global Agriculture, and Environment: Discussion," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 30(3), pages 530-532.
    4. Chang, Ching-Cheng & Eddleman, Bobby R. & McCarl, Bruce A., 1991. "Potential Benefits Of Rice Variety And Water Management Improvements In The Texas Gulf Coast," Western Journal of Agricultural Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 16(2), pages 1-9, December.
    5. Keith H. Coble & Ching-Cheng Chang & Bruce A. McCarl & Bobby R. Eddleman, 1992. "Assessing Economic Implications of New Technology: The Case of Cornstarch-Based Biodegradable Plastic," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 14(1), pages 33-43.
    6. Searchinger, Timothy & Heimlich, Ralph & Houghton, R. A. & Dong, Fengxia & Elobeid, Amani & Fabiosa, Jacinto F. & Tokgoz, Simla & Hayes, Dermot J. & Yu, Hun-Hsiang, 2008. "Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change," Staff General Research Papers Archive 12881, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    7. Bruce A. McCarl & Thomas H. Spreen, 1980. "Price Endogenous Mathematical Programming As a Tool for Sector Analysis," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 62(1), pages 87-102.
    8. Bruce A. McCarl & Uwe A. Schneider, 2000. "U.S. Agriculture's Role in a Greenhouse Gas Emission Mitigation World: An Economic Perspective," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 22(1), pages 134-159.
    9. Scott A. Hamilton & Bruce A. McCarl & Richard M. Adams, 1985. "The Effect of Aggregate Response Assumptions on Environmental Impact Analyses," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 67(2), pages 407-413.
    10. Chang, Ching-Cheng, 2002. "The potential impact of climate change on Taiwan's agriculture," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 51-64, May.
    11. RICHARD M. Adams & DARIUS M. Adams & JOHN M. Callaway & CHING‐CHENG Chang & BRUCE A. Mccarl, 1993. "Sequestering Carbon On Agricultural Land: Social Cost And Impacts On Timber Markets," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 11(1), pages 76-87, January.
    12. Chi‐Chung Chen & Ching‐Cheng Chang, 2005. "The impact of weather on crop yield distribution in Taiwan: some new evidence from panel data models and implications for crop insurance," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 33(s3), pages 503-511, November.
    13. Johannes Lehmann, 2007. "A handful of carbon," Nature, Nature, vol. 447(7141), pages 143-144, May.
    14. Ben C. French, 1960. "Some Considerations in Estimating Assembly Cost Functions for Agricultural Processing Operations," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 42(4), pages 767-778.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Allen H. Hu & Chia-Hsiang Chen & Lance Hongwei Huang & Ming-Hsiu Chung & Yi-Chen Lan & Zhonghua Chen, 2019. "Environmental Impact and Carbon Footprint Assessment of Taiwanese Agricultural Products: A Case Study on Taiwanese Dongshan Tea," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-13, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chih-Chun Kung & Meng-Shiuh Chang, 2015. "Effect of Agricultural Feedstock to Energy Conversion Rate on Bioenergy and GHG Emissions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(5), pages 1-15, May.
    2. Kung, Chih-Chun & Zhang, Liguo & Kong, Fanbin, 2016. "How government subsidy leads to sustainable bioenergy development," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 275-284.
    3. Kung, Chih-Chun, 2019. "A stochastic evaluation of economic and environmental effects of Taiwan's biofuel development under climate change," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 1051-1064.
    4. Meng-Shiuh CHANG & Wen WANG & Chih-Chun KUNG, 2015. "Economic effects of the biochar application on rice supply in Taiwan," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 61(6), pages 284-295.
    5. Kung, Chih-Chun & Cao, Xiaoyong & Choi, Yongrok & Kung, Shan-Shan, 2019. "A stochastic analysis of cropland utilization and resource allocation under climate change," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    6. Chih-Chun Kung & Bruce A. McCarl & Chi-Chung Chen, 2014. "An Environmental and Economic Evaluation of Pyrolysis for Energy Generation in Taiwan with Endogenous Land Greenhouse Gases Emissions," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-19, March.
    7. Kung, Chih-Chun & Zhang, Ning & Choi, Yongrok & Xiong, Kai & Yu, Jiangli, 2019. "Effectiveness of crop residuals in ethanol and pyrolysis-based electricity production: A stochastic analysis under uncertain climate impacts," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 267-276.
    8. Kung, Chih-Chun & Zhang, Ning, 2015. "Renewable energy from pyrolysis using crops and agricultural residuals: An economic and environmental evaluation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 90(P2), pages 1532-1544.
    9. Chih-Chun Kung & Hualin Xie & Tao Wu & Shih-Chih Chen, 2014. "Biofuel for Energy Security: An Examination on Pyrolysis Systems with Emissions from Fertilizer and Land-Use Change," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-18, January.
    10. Meng-Shiuh Chang & Chih-Chun Kung, 2018. "The greenhouse gas impact of bioenergy in developing economies: Evidence from Taiwan," Energy & Environment, , vol. 29(3), pages 315-332, May.
    11. Chih-Chun KUNG, 2018. "A dynamic framework of sustainable development in agriculture and bioenergy," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 64(10), pages 445-455.
    12. Xiaoyong CAO & Chih-Chun KUNG & Yuelong WANG, 2017. "An environmental and economic evaluation of carbon sequestration from pyrolysis and biochar application in China," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 63(12), pages 569-578.
    13. Kung, Chih-Chun & Wu, Tao, 2021. "Influence of water allocation on bioenergy production under climate change: A stochastic mathematical programming approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    14. Ching-Cheng Chang, 1999. "Carbon sequestration cost by afforestation in Taiwan," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 2(3), pages 199-213, September.
    15. Kung, Chih-Chun & Mu, Jianhong E., 2019. "Prospect of China's renewable energy development from pyrolysis and biochar applications under climate change," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 1-1.
    16. Callaway, J.M., 2000. "Assessing the Costs and Market Impacts of Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change and Acid Rain," Other publications TiSEM c58adec9-1535-46cf-b213-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    17. Kung, Chih-Chun & McCarl, Bruce A. & Cao, Xiaoyong, 2013. "Economics of pyrolysis-based energy production and biochar utilization: A case study in Taiwan," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 317-323.
    18. Szulczyk, Kenneth R. & McCarl, Bruce A. & Cornforth, Gerald, 2010. "Market penetration of ethanol," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 394-403, January.
    19. Kung, Chih-Chun & Lan, Xiaolong & Yang, Yunxia & Kung, Shan-Shan & Chang, Meng-Shiuh, 2022. "Effects of green bonds on Taiwan's bioenergy development," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 238(PA).
    20. Uwe A. Schneider & Bruce A. McCarl, 2003. "Measuring Abatement Potentials When Multiple Change Is Present: The Case Of Greenhouse Gas Mitigation In U.S. Agriculture And Forestry," Working Papers FNU-23, Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, revised Apr 2002.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:engenv:v:25:y:2014:i:1:p:13-39. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.