What Development for Bioenergy in Asia: A Long-term Analysis of the Effects of Policy Instruments using TIAM-FR model

Abstract

Asian countries have sharply increased their energy consumption with economic growth, inducing an extremely high dependency on energy fossil due to a low level of energy resources.  In 2011, Asia’s share in global energy consumption reached 40%, of which China, India, Japan and South Korea represented 70%. Furthermore, these countries are ranked among the world’s largest CO₂ emitters. Hence, bioenergy is currently being highlighted to diversify the energy mix and to mitigate climate change in these countries. Along with the direct bioenergy promotion policies, a variety of economic policy instruments are introduced as emission trading scheme, carbon and energy taxes. In this study, we estimated the evolution of bioenergy deployment from current energy and climate policies through scenarios analysis using bottom-up energy system optimization model, TIAM-FR, a TIMES family model from ETSAP/IEA. Different scenarios were developed with basis on political instruments in these countries: (1) BAU, (2) Global climate change (50% of world GHG emissions reduction), (3) National GHG mitigation targets from INDCs, (4) National GHG mitigation targets + Bioenergy policy, (5) Carbon tax system. According to the results, the higher is climate constraints, the higher is bioenergy development. Hence, carbon tax system derived the most bioenergy consumption by 2030 followed by global climate change scenario. Current INDCs target is evaluated as not sufficient to promote bioenergy development without renewable energy targets and biofuel blending mandates.