@article{Gorter:188083,
      recid = {188083},
      author = {Gorter, Harry and Tsur, Yacov},
      title = {Towards a Genuine Sustainability Standard for Biofuel  Production},
      address = {2010},
      number = {1014-2016-81526},
      pages = {21},
      year = {2010},
      abstract = {Sustainability standards for biofuel production calculated  via life cycle accounting (LCA) require
a certain reduction  in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to gasoline.  Recently it has been
shown that LCA gives biased results  and should be extended to incorporate indirect land  use
change (iLUC). We show that even including iLUCs, LCA  is still biased and distorted because it
is based on GHG  emission and uptake calculations, which assume economic  values only if (i) the
environmental price of carbon is  constant over time and (ii) the social discount rate (SDR)  equals
zero. We offer a sustainability standard free of  these restrictions, expressed in terms of a range
of SDRs  and a maximal GHG payback period. Applying our methodology  to Brazilian and U.S.
data, we find that in Brazil  conversion to biofuel production of two land types is  genuinely
sustainable, i.e., satisfies our sustainability  standard, whereas in the United States no land  type
satisfies our criterion. Furthermore, the social value  of CO2e savings by having the ethanol
production from 12.8  million hectares of U.S. corn be produced in Brazil instead  may be as high
as $817.7 bil.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/188083},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.188083},
}