• Assessment of food waste reduction impact needs to include economic and biophysical indicators. • Economy-wide models as proposed in this paper can account for all market and non-market impacts of reducing food waste. • Reducing households' food waste increases savings; it decreases agri-food production and to a minor extent GDP. • Environmental indicators are improving as EU land use, water abstraction and greenhouse gas emissions decline.

As the EU is moving towards a low carbon economy and seeks to further develop its renewable energy policy, this paper quantitatively investigates the impact of plausible energy market reforms from the perspective of bio-renewables. Employing a state-of-the-art biobased variant of a computable general equilibrium model, this study assesses the perceived medium-term benefits, risks and trade-offs which arise from an advanced biofuels plan, two exploratory scenarios of a more ‘sustainable’ conventional biofuels plan and a ‘no-mandate’ scenario. Consistent with more recent studies, none of the scenarios considered present significant challenges to EU food-security or agricultural land usage. An illustrative advanced biofuels plan simulation requires non-trivial public support to implement whilst a degree of competition for biomass with (high-value) advanced biomass material industries is observed. On the other hand, it significantly alleviates land use pressures, whilst lignocellulose biomass prices are not expected to increase to unsustainable levels. Clearly, these observations are subject to assumptions on technological change, sustainable biomass limits, expected trends in fossil fuel prices and EU access to third-country trade. With these same caveats in mind, the switch to increased bioethanol production does not result in significant market tensions in biomass markets.

The threats of climate change, food security, resource depletion and energy security are driving society towards a sustainable low-carbon future. Within this paradigm, biomass plays an invaluable role in meeting the food, feed, energy and material needs of future generations. Current EU thinking advocates biomass for high-value materials, which is not aligned with EU public policy support for ‘lower value’ bioenergy applications. ‘High-technology’ and ‘no bioenergy mandate’ pathways explore market conditions that generate a more equitable distribution between competing biomass conversion technologies and competing biomass and fossil technologies. In achieving greater equity, these pathways ease biomass market tensions; enhance EU food security; improve EU biobased trade balances; accelerate biomaterial sectors’ output performance and favour macroeconomic growth. Moreover, an additional 80% increase in the oil price signals a tipping point in favour of first generation biofuels, whilst simultaneously boosting output in advanced material conversion technologies even more than the high-technology pathway.

Limiting climate change below a 2 °C temperature increase this century will require substantial reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and the transition to a climate-friendly, low carbon society. In this paper, the economic impact of a less carbon-intensive economy on agricultural markets is estimated by means of an integrated modelling framework. First, the macroeconomic impacts of moving into a global low carbon economy are analysed by applying different carbon taxes in a general equilibrium modelling framework. Second, the potential adoption of emission mitigation technologies is quantified and used in the Aglink-Cosimo model to assess the impacts on agricultural markets of emission mitigation scenarios compatible with the 2.0 °C target prescribed in the Paris Agreement. Results for 2030 show reductions in global non-CO₂ GHG emissions from agriculture (i.e., methane and nitrous oxide) by 10, 16 and 19% in 50, 100 and 150 USD/t CO₂eq global carbon tax scenarios, respectively (Least Developed Countries excluded). Only between 0.6% and 1.3% of the global reduction is caused by indirect macroeconomic effects, although at the regional level they can cause up to 5.8% of the reduction in agricultural emissions. Results suggest that ambitious mitigation targets can provoke significant negative impacts on agricultural production and underline the importance of integrating GHG emission developments and impacts of related policies into agricultural market projections.

As the EU is moving towards a low carbon economy and seeks to further develop its renewable energy policy, this paper quantitatively investigates the impact of plausible energy market reforms from the perspective of bio-renewables. Employing a state-of-the-art biobased variant of a computable general equilibrium model, this study assesses the perceived medium-term benefits, risks and trade-offs which arise from an advanced biofuels plan, two exploratory scenarios of a more 'sustainable' conventional biofuels plan and a 'no-mandate' scenario. Consistent with more recent studies, none of the scenarios considered present significant challenges to EU food-security or agricultural land usage. An illustrative advanced biofuels plan simulation requires non-trivial public support to implement whilst a degree of competition for biomass with (high-value) advanced biomass material industries is observed. On the other hand, it significantly alleviates land use pressures, whilst lignocellulose biomass prices are not expected to increase to unsustainable levels. Clearly, these observations are subject to assumptions on technological change, sustainable biomass limits, expected trends in fossil fuel prices and EU access to third-country trade. With these same caveats in mind, the switch to increased bioethanol production does not result in significant market tensions in biomass markets.