Modeling Alternative Policies for Forestry and Agricultural Bioenergy Production and GHG Mitigation

A key consideration for development of energy and climate policy affecting the forestry and agricultural sectors is that the selection of specific mechanisms implemented to achieve bioenergy production and/or greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation targets may have substantial effects on landowner incentives to adopt alternative practices. For instance, the prices of allowances and offsets are expected to diverge under some policies being considered where there is a binding cap on the quantity of offsets from the agricultural and forest sectors. In addition, provisions that limit or exclude specific practices from receiving carbon payments will affect the quantity and cost of GHG mitigation opportunities available. In this study, the recently updated Forest and Agriculture Sector Optimization Model with GHGs (FASOMGHG) was used to estimate GHG mitigation potential for private land in the contiguous U.S. under a variety of GHG price policies. Model scenarios suggest that U.S. forestry and agriculture could provide mitigation of 200 – 1000 megatons carbon dioxide equivalent per year (Mt CO2e/year) at carbon prices of $15 to $50/tCO2e. Binding limits on offsets have increasingly large effects on both the total magnitude and distribution of GHG mitigation across options over time. In addition, discounting or excluding payments for forest sinks can reduce annualized land-based mitigation potential 37-90 percent relative to the full eligibility scenario whereas discounting or excluding agricultural practices reduces mitigation potential by less than 10 percent.