Abstract
Biofuel is expected to contribute reduction of greenhouse gas emission as a high renewable energy, while a growing demand for biofuels increases the risk of impairs food security. However, previous assessments of the potential of bioenergy are still very rare. Further, recent studies generally tend to overestimate the potential of bioenergy because they considered all current non-agricultural lands as potential cultivation for biofuel product. In this paper, we estimated the potential amount of energy crop globally. Two different land-cover types, abandoned land and fallow land, are considered to evaluate energy crop plantations. The estimated global bioenergy potential is 237EJ on abandoned land and fallow land. This value is equivalent to about 47% of current world primary energy demand. Although it is smaller than previous one due to considering different terms of potential land use, we believe that our estimation is relatively close to realistic situation. In addition, soil degradation on abandoned land causes decreased number of global bioenergy potential on abandoned land, from 128EJ to 94EJ.
