Bioenergy and biomass trade: Evaluation of models' suitability for analysing international trade of biomass and bioenergy products

FOREWORD This report presents the results of the study " Evaluation of international (trade) models with emphasis on the possibility to include bioenergy " , initiated during the autumn 2006 by the IEA Bioenergy Task 40. The study has been led have done most of the initial writing of the report. The other authors have contributed significantly by commenting, correcting and adding to the initial report. The study has been reviewed externally by Dr. Detlef van Vuuren and Drs. Bas Eickhout (working for the Dutch MNP/RIVM), and sent to all Task 40 members for comments. The report will be published as a working paper at the IEA Task 40 web site. The authors thank all persons who kindly have contributed to the content of the report, in particular the external reviewers. 3 SUMMARY This report evaluates existing international economic models of the forest sector, the agricultural sector and/or the energy sector in order to assess their strong and weak points for analysing international trade of biomass and bioenergy products. The overview is mainly focused on public models used by academia, based on publicly available data sources. These models usually have a time horizon of several decades. Commercial trade models, which typically have a time horizon of month or a few years, are not considered. Many models were found of interest for this study, and after a preliminary search it was decided to concentrate on: • The agricultural sector models CAPRI and AGLINK/COSIMO • The forest sector (i.e. forestry and forest industries) partial equilibrium models EFI-GTM, PELPS and GFPM • The partial equilibrium models EU-FASOM and ENFA, which include the agriculture and the forest sectors • The energy models BIOTRANS and PEEP • The energy model TIMER as sub-model in IMAGE • The general equilibrium model GRACE, as a representative of GTAP models which include forestry and forest industries. The comparative evaluation of the models was based on the following criteria (cf. chapter 2 for more detailed description): C1. Link to economic theory C2. Spatial considerations C3. Dynamic features C4. Link to other sectors and land use issues C5. Model and data availability and model adjustments needed. Table 1 presents a summary comparison of the models based on the five criteria. It is concluded that none of the existing models are capable of performing good analyses of international trade of biomass and bioenergy products, and that a combination of models is …