Energy supply from agriculture and forestry in Austria under climate and global change in 2020 and 2040
Abstract
The twofold implication of climate change for power supply - the need for low- and carbon-free production of energy services as well as the changed conditions for producing renewable energy - was examined so far mainly focusing on the first aspect („mitigation “in the broader sense). In this proposal we thus focus on the supply of energy bound in biomass (indirect solar energy) under a future, small scale regionalised climate change scenario for Austria. The competition with competing use options of this biomass (in particular food, energy, raw material) under scenarios of global change is considered in detail. The Stern-Review (Stern, 2007) has – probably most comprehensively so far – summarized the impacts of climate change by sector – including effects on the agricultural and energy sector. It was criticised on economic grounds primarily for its choice of the discount rate. The - compared to the earlier literature - higher damage quantifications of Stern, however, are at least as much due to the necessarily chosen small-scale-analysis in impact estimation. The aim of this project thus is to determine the political economic options of renewable energy supply from agricultural and forestry-based biomass under a climate scenario for the 2040s (reclip:more) and expected climate conditions for 2020 (derived from the 2040 scenario). This investigation is carried out to cover all of Austria, and analyses the respective business level impacts (management of production, price and income risks), sectoral effects (with interlinkages with food- and industry sectors facing a similar resource demand) as well as the nation wide economic effects, including externalities. Moreover it is a central issue to estimate the leakage-effects – induced by international shifts in production and changes in transport-flows – resulting from such a greenhouse gas mitigation policy. In terms of methodology we link a multiregional computable general equilibrium model (to be developed within this project) for the EU 27 and world regions with an agricultural and forestry optimization system, which has been developed for Austria (FAMOS). Both models include the impacts of climate and global change in 2020 and for the 2040ies, in particular via changes in agricultural and forestry harvest rates, production technologies, land use options and management intensities, as well as via energy production options (non-renewable versus renewable, biomass-based versus non-biomass-based), but also in energy demand for Austria.
Publikationen
Project staff
Erwin Schmid
Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Erwin Schmid
erwin.schmid@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-73002
BOKU Project Leader
01.06.2009 - 30.09.2011
Johannes Schmidt
Assoc. Prof. Priv.-Doz. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.nat.techn. Johannes Schmidt
johannes.schmidt@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-73118
Project Staff
01.06.2009 - 30.09.2011
Martin Schönhart
Dipl.-Ing. Mag. Dr. Martin Schönhart
martin.schoenhart@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-73124
Project Staff
01.06.2009 - 30.09.2011
BOKU partners
External partners
Wegener Zentrum für Klima und Globalen Wandel
Prof. Dr. Karl W. Steininger
coordinator