The production of biofuels and the establishment of a biofuels industry in South Africa have largely been hampered by the structure, procedures and requirements as set out in the Industrial Biofuel Strategy. This article sketches the industry by means of a game theoretic representation. A model...

The production of biofuels in many countries is largely driven by the government strategy and incentives that are in place. In South Africa the first round of the development of such a draft strategy took place in 2005 while the official stance on biofuels was finalized in December of 2007....

The consensus view of scientists is that the build-up of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere is causing global warming. To reduce the probability of severe climate-change impacts and costs occurring, global GHG emissions need to be reduced substantially over coming decades. The United...

The oil price hike in 2007-08 underlined the vulnerability of Indonesia’s energy subsidy policy to oil price volatility. In addition to entailing significant economic and environmental costs, energy subsidies put pressure on the public budget and benefit mostly rich households. Phasing them...

Purpose – The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) is a specific example of life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to legislative measures that have far-reaching implications for economic operators. This paper aims to analyze LCA limitations for biofuels based on RED from an environmental accounting...

The global land use implications of biofuel expansion have received considerable attention in the literature over the past decade. Model-based estimates of the emissions from cropland expansion have been used to assess the environmental impacts of biofuel policies. And integrated assessment...

To meet its objectives of expanding biofuel production, Brazil is confronted with the need to allocate new land areas for energy crops. This raises issues to be resolved concerning future exports to Europe. The European Directive 2009/28/CE of 23 April 2009 on the promotion of the use of energy...

Life cycle analysis (LCA), as it is currently applied, can lead to biased results. The use of LCA information is particularly sensitive when taken in the context of government regulatory frameworks. Indeed, instead of encouraging companies to reduce their impact on the environment,...

The overall goal of this paper is to analyse the political economy of food price policies in China during the global food crisis. The results show that given China’s unique economic and political context and the nature of its agricultural markets, the government’s reaction to the...

A key driver of foreign investment in land, food security is a challenge mankind has been confronted with in various times and places. Wherever human societies have developed, growing needs have led to increasing arable land, and when land has been limited by nature or wars, food shortages...