Economic impacts of biofuels deployment in Andalusia

Abstract

This paper aims to estimate the economic impacts of increasing the production capacity of the installed biofuel plants in Andalusia (southern Spain). A computable general equilibrium (CGE) approach is used to calculate the changes in the economic sectors' activity, in employment as well as in GDP and other macroeconomic variables relevant to biofuel plants in Andalusia under two distinct scenarios (i) based on an operating biodiesel plant (with 90 ktoe/year of installed capacity); (ii) upgrading to 2174 ktoe by 2013 in compliance with the regional ‘Plan Andaluz de Sostenibilidad Energética (PASENER) 2007–2013'. Results show that compliance with the PASENER goal would increase the activity level of the economic sectors considered by 3.04%, the total induced employment generated would reach 167,975 equivalent full-time jobs lasting one year and the GDP would increase by 9.82%.