The Trade-off Between Bioenergy and Emissions When Land Is Scarce
研究了社会规划者在土地稀缺约束下如何最小化环境成本，发现排放应以每英亩计量，而传统生命周期评估忽略土地稀缺性，可能误导政策结论。
Agricultural biofuels require the use of scarce land, and this land has opportunity cost. We explore the objective function of a social planner who includes a land constraint in the optimization decision to minimize environmental cost. The results show that emissions should be measured on a per acre basis. Conventional agricultural life cycle assessments for biofuels report carbon emissions on a per gallon basis, thereby ignoring the implications of land scarcity and implicitly assuming an infinite supply of the inputs needed for production. Switchgrass and corn are then modeled as competing alternatives to show how the inclusion of a land constraint can influence life cycle rankings and alter policy conclusions.