5. Conclusion
Bioenergy is considered as an effective approach to provide sustainable energy sources and mitigate climate change. This study formulates a price endogenous, partial equilibrium model to examine the potential economic and environmental effects of bioenergy production in Jiangxi province. The results show that pure ethanol technology can replace approximately 400.8 million l gasoline but does not contribute much to climate change mitigation. Instead, joint production patterns can provide a significant quantity of emissions reduction and bioenergy production with a lower ethanol production. The total government expenditure is, in general, higher for joint production scenarios; however, the farmer revenue is also higher. However, the development of bioenergy can involve complicated issues such as electricity price volatility, landuse shift and appropriate subsidy design. In addition, to avoid the high cost from homogenous subsidy, a discriminated form of subsidy may be designed. That is, if the government can distinguish the land fertility (i.e. input–output ratio), net social cost can be reduced because the less fertile land will receive lower subsidies. Economic and environmental benefits are one side of the bioenergy development and thus require a more comprehensive analysis to better access its net influences and impacts in other sectors.
