Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

Biofuels: Review of Policies and Impacts

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the environmental, economical, and policy considerations related to biofuels. While the biofuel production and consumption exhibited significant increase over the first decade of the new millennium, this and further increases in biofuel production are driven primarily by government policies. Currently available first generation biofuels are with a few exceptions not economically viable in the absence of fiscal incentives or high oil prices. Also the environmental impacts of biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels are quite ambiguous. The review of the most recent economic models dealing with biofuels and their economic impacts provides a distinction between structural and reduced form models. The review ofreduced models is structured toward the time series analysis approach to thedependencies between prices of feedstock, biofuels, and fossil fuels.

Main Content
For improved accessibility of PDF content, download the file to your device.
Current View