FAA-LSC

Direct and indirect land use change emissions due to SAF and PTL Pathways: Data and model improvements and role of soil organic carbon

Duration: 9/1/2022 – 8/31/2024
Award Amount:$ 789,688

Participants
Qianlai Zhuang, CoPI in collaboration with Taheripour, Farzad; van der Mensbrugghe, Dominique; Armstrong, Shalamar; Singh, Shweta; Corong, Erwin; Chepeliev, Maksym; Lusk, Jayson

Project Objectives
This research aims at achieving the following six main goals:
i. Provide a critical review of the existing tier-1 data sources that have been commonly used
in determining land use emissions factors in assessing ILUC emissions for biofuels
including SAFs), determine the pros and cons of each data sources, and validate the
credibility of each data source.
ii. Generate a new emissions factors dataset at a gride cell for the whole world that
represents the carbon content of each type of land cover items to use in ILUC calculation.
The new dataset will provide up-to-date data on SOC, above and underground carbon in
vegetation, and other land carbon sources.
iii. Provide a dataset to assess changes in SOC due cultivation of feedstock for SAF
production at farm level.
iv. Generate a new carbon accounting software to facilitate ILUC calculation for each
selected emission factor dataset.
v. Develop a methodology for assessment of DLUC at farm level based on experimental
observations at farm level and enhance accuracy of ILUC values based on these
experiments.
vi. Augment the GTAP-BIO model to calculate induced land use change emissions for wind
and solar electricity.