Avoiding Bioenergy Competition for Food Crops and Land

The report argues that dedicated land use for bioenergy is unsustainable and unrealistic because it competes directly with food production, animal feed, and carbon storage. It recommends phasing out crop-based biofuels and those requiring dedicated land, suggesting that solar photovoltaics offer a far more land-efficient alternative for energy generation.

• Dedicated land use for bioenergy creates a conflict with global food security. The world faces a 70 percent "food gap" between 2006 crop calories and 2050 needs; phasing out crop-based biofuels could reduce this gap to 60 percent, while ambitious biofuel targets could increase it to 90 percent.
• Widespread bioenergy targets, such as meeting 20 percent of global energy demand by 2050, are unsustainable as they would require at least doubling the annual global harvest of plant material, on top of increases already needed for food and timber.
• Bioenergy is highly inefficient in its conversion of solar radiation to energy compared to solar photovoltaics (PV). For example, sugarcane in the tropics converts only about 0.2 percent of solar radiation into ethanol, and maize in Iowa converts about 0.15 percent. In contrast, PV systems can generate over 100 times more usable energy per hectare than future bioenergy is likely to produce.
• Many claims that bioenergy reduces greenhouse gas emissions are based on "double counting" carbon. These analyses often exclude the carbon dioxide released during biomass combustion by assuming it is offset by plant growth, even when those plants would have grown regardless of their use for energy.
• Cellulosic biofuels and the use of "degraded" land do not effectively avoid competition with food. Cellulosic feedstocks often require the same flat, fertile lands as food crops, and using degraded lands—such as Indonesia's alang-alang grasslands—carries high opportunity costs, potentially pushing palm oil production into forests.
• Only "additional" biomass sources that do not compete with food or dedicated land use are consistent with a sustainable food future. These include winter cover crops, timber processing wastes, urban waste wood, landfill methane, and certain crop residues, though their total energy potential is modest.
• The report recommends five specific policy changes to phase out bioenergy that uses crops or dedicated land: fixing carbon accounting flaws in treaties and laws, phasing out subsidies and regulatory requirements, making such biofuels ineligible for low-carbon fuel standards, excluding them from renewable energy laws, and maintaining current ethanol blend limits in gasoline.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Avoiding Bioenergy Competition for Food Crops and Land. https://www.wri.org/research/avoiding-bioenergy-competition-food-crops-and-land

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Avoiding Bioenergy Competition for Food Crops and Land. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/avoiding-bioenergy-competition-food-crops-and-land.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Avoiding Bioenergy Competition for Food Crops and Land |url=https://www.wri.org/research/avoiding-bioenergy-competition-food-crops-and-land |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendavoiding, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Avoiding Bioenergy Competition for Food Crops and Land}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/avoiding-bioenergy-competition-food-crops-and-land}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }