Effect of Land-Use Change

The results show a strong influence of the land-use change considered, with net GHG emissions ranging from 0.047 kg CO2 eq./km (LUC-5, i. e., grassland severely-degraded to cultivated land) to 0.249 kg CO2 eq./km (LUC-6, i. e., forested land to cultivated land), that is, from -80% to +5% with respect to gasoline, respectively. It comes out that the net GHG emissions of bioethanol are lower than those of gasoline in all cases except when growing energy crops leads to deforestation.