September 2011: The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Implementing Agreement on Bioenergy, IEA Bioenergy, has published a new report titled “Bioenergy, Land Use Change and Climate Change Mitigation – Background Technical Report” that provides a detailed overview and update of challenging and controversial climate change mitigation potentials of bioenergy use.

Prepared by Göran Berndes, Neil Bird and Annette Cowie, the report focuses on land-use changes brought about by the cultivation of bioenergy, and how these changes can influence the climate change mitigation potential of bioenergy. The paper begins by discussing the carbon cycle generally before moving on to biomass focused sections on: land use change; bioenergy and climate change mitigation; options for mitigating land use change associated with bioenergy; bioenergy and land use change in the context of global climate targets; conclusions for policymakers and stakeholders; and a list of recommended reading.

The report’s key messages include that: bioenergy can, when responsibly produced, offer major opportunities to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to mitigate climate change; bioenergy projects can, but do not always, lead to both direct and indirect land-use change, the latter of which remains extremely difficult to quantify; food, fiber, and bioenergy products can be grown in integrated cropping systems that reduce land-use change pressure and improve productive use of land; short term views of land-use change must be weighed against longer the term effects of those changes, be they positive or negative; and lastly, responsible bioenergy production requires simple and transparent production criteria. [Publication: Bioenergy, Land Use Change and Climate Change Mitigation – Background Technical Report]