The vast majority of all agricultural production is directed at feeding the world’s population; either directly, or indirectly by feeding livestock that supplies animal products. Other agricultural products, such as fibres for clothing, biomass for energy generation and tobacco production, make up a very small share of the total current agricultural production.

This means that developments in food demand and supply and the balance between them will heavily influence all agricultural and land use analyses, including the bioenergy potential analysis in this work. Forecast­ing these developments is a complex task for the following reasons:

• Demand: future food demand depends on the size of the world’s population and the composition of its diet. This diet, in turn, depends on parameters such as wealth and cultural choice. Particularly important is the intensity of animal products in that diet, as these require a large amount of animal feed.

• Supply: future food supply depends on the area available for food cultiva­tion and the food yield per unit of area. The evolution of this yield is hard to predict over larger timescales because it depends on numerous factors such as R&D results, technology adoption, education and sustainability require­ments.

• Balance of demand and supply: the balance between food supply and de­mand is poorly understood. It is often argued that the current food supply is adequate for the entire global demand, but that unequal distribution leads to food shortages in parts of the world.

The land available for bioenergy cropping in our work is strongly de­pendent on the assumptions made in the food analysis. Where possible, we have used conservative assumptions (i. e. assumptions close to business — as-usual scenarios), with one notable exception; a constraint on the con­sumption of meat, creating a more sustainable diet, see Section 3.1.3. We performed a sensitivity analysis by varying parameters on food demand and supply and the balance between them. The effects of these variations on land available for bioenergy cropping are presented in Table 6. They show that our results on sustainable bioenergy potential are indeed sensi­tive to developments in food demand and supply and the balance between them.

3.5 CONCLUSION

The Ecofys Energy Scenario requires a significant share of bioenergy supply to meet the remaining energy demand after using other renew­able energy options. We only include bioenergy supply that meets strict sustainability criteria and leads to high greenhouse gas emission savings when compared to fossil references. We safeguard this by applying a set of sustainability criteria to assess the sustainable bioenergy potentials from residues, wastes, complementary fellings, energy crops and algae.

We conclude that the potential identified in this study is capable of meeting the required demand of the Ecofys Energy Scenario [1] with bio­energy that meets these sustainability criteria and simultaneously accom­plishes high greenhouse gas emission savings. The amount of sustainable bioenergy used and the amount of land used for sustainable bioenergy cropping in the Ecofys Energy Scenario are both near the low end of the range of potential values found in literature. In our sensitivity analysis we find, as expected, that the potential area available for bioenergy cropping is sensitive to developments in food demand and supply and the balance between them.