In the period 2010-2011 we carried out a survey of fifteen leading European experts on the future of advanced (second and third generation) biofuel technologies. The survey focuses on eliciting probabilistic information on the future costs of these technologies and on the potential role of RD&D...

This dissertation studies the science and policy-making of alternative energy using biofuels as a case study, primarily examining the instruments that can be used to alleviate the impacts of climate change and their relative efficacy. Three case studies of policy-making on biofuels in the...

The mix of public and private research funding investments in alternative energy presents a challenge for isolating the effect of government R&D funding. Factors such as energy prices and environmental policy influence both private and public R&D decisions. Moreover, because government R&D is...

We analyze the relationships within the liquid fuels system and its associated supply chain using innovative network filtering methods, namely the Minimum Spanning Tree and Triangulated Maximally Filtered Graph. Our findings reveal that biofuels form robust connections with their feedstocks that...

We analyze the long-term impacts of large-scale expansion of biofuels on land-usechange, food supply and prices, and the overall economy in various countries or regions using amulti-country, multi-sector global computable general equilibrium model augmented with an explicitland-use module and...

We quantify the emergence of biofuel markets and its impact on U.S. and world agriculturefor the coming decade using the multi-market, multi-commodity international FAPRI (Food andAgricultural Policy Research Institute) model. The model incorporates the trade-offs betweenbiofuel, feed, and food...

Many low income countries in Africa are optimistic that producing biofuels domestically will not only reduce their dependence on imported fossil fuels, but also stimulate economic development, particularly in poorer rural areas. Skeptics, on the other hand, view biofuels as a threat to food...

More than 40% of US grain is now used to produce biofuels, which are used as substitutes for gasoline in transportation. Biofuels have been blamed universally for recent increases in world food prices. Many studies have shown that these energy mandates in the US and EU may have a large (30-60%)...

In the context of energy security and climate protection, biomass is given high importance. Nevertheless, land-use conflicts resulting from the cultivation of biomass and their economy-wide effects are yet to be fully understood. To shed light on this issue we link three distinctive models; a...

Recent contributions have questioned whether biofuels policies actually lead to emissions reductions, and thus lower climate costs. In this paper we make two contributions to the literature. First, we study the market effects of a renewable fuel standard. Opposed to most previous studies we...