Análisis coste-beneficios de los biocarburantes en España

Résumé

Public support to renewable energy technologies is usually justified in terms of its contribution to reducing energy dependence, its positive environmental impacts and its role as an economic stimulus instrument. In the case of biofuels, greenhouse gas emissions reduction has received significant attention from scholars and international organizations. More recently, the impact of biofuels on the economy – and especially on employment creation – has gained prominence as an issue of academic inquiry and in order to provide further arguments for its. In contrast, the impact of biofuels on energy dependence has been more superficially discussed. The aim of the present work is to analyse the potential contribution of biofuels to these impact categories and to estimate its economic value, which is subsequently integrated – along with the cost of using biofuels – in a cost-benefit analysis aimed at assessing the suitability of biofuel promotion policies in Spain. For that, once the scope and the analytical framework have been defined, both a base and an alternative scenario are described. The dissertation then moves onto presenting the data sources used for calculating the cost of producing different fuels and the approaches used to estimate the economic value of different external impacts. The latter consists of: [I] the impact pathway approach, applied for estimating the environmental impacts; [II] an extended input-output approach, for assessing the economic impact; and [III] an assessment of potential consequences on the economy derived from an increase in fuel prices, as a way of quantifiying the role of biofuels in mitigating the energy dependency problem. Results confirm that, in regard to the environmental impacts, the use of biofuels has a positive impact on welfare due to improvements on environmental quality, which takes places as a reduction of greenhouse gases, SO2 and particulate matter emissions. In contrast, on the side of the socio-economic impact, direct and indirect impacts induced by biofuels are not very significant because most raw materials used in their production, and a significant portion of biofuels, are imported from abroad. Moreover, taking into account the whole effects on the economy, the use of biofuels is displacing income from other sectors, finally resulting in a net negative impact on the economy. In terms of energy dependency, biofuels do not significantly contribute to reduce neither the risk of supply disruptions (in the short, mid and long term) nor the risk of suffering increases in crude oil prices, meanwhile it could increase this impact due its high costs. All in all, the research shows that introducing mandatory targets of biofuel consumption along the timeframe of 2008-2020 could result in substantial welfare losses for the Spanish society. This dissertation illustrates the contribution of economic analysis to policy design since economic valuation reveals that common-wisdom arguments usually adopted to promote certain technologies are not always justified in terms of welfare. It also concludes that in order to design public policies aimed to improve the sustainability of the transport sector, an extended analysis should be conducted including different technological alternatives and policy options.