The challenges and opportunities facing today's agriculture within the climate change context are at least twofold: in addition to adapting to a potentially more variable climate, agriculture may also take on the addition role of mitigating GHG emissions—such as providing renewable fuels to replace fossil fuels to some extent. For the US, a large-scale GHG mitigation effort through biofuels production pursuant to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) is already unfolding. A question thus naturally arises for the RFS2-relevant US agricultural sector: will climate change make it harder to meet the volume goals set in the RFS2 mandates, considering that both climate change and RFS2 may have significant impacts on US agriculture? The agricultural component of FASOMGHG that models the land use allocation within the conterminous US agricultural sector is employed to investigate the effects of climate change (with autonomous adaptation at farm level), coupled with RFS2, on US agriculture. The analysis shows that climate change eases the burden of meeting the RFS2 mandates increasing consumer welfare while decreasing producer welfare. The results also show that climate change encourages a more diversified use of biofuel feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol production, in particular crop residues. 1. Introduction Key to agricultural production, climate and the atmosphere provide essential inputs such as solar radiation, water, and CO2 for plant and animal growth [1]. Changes in climate and the atmosphere, projected by IPCC WGI [2] as inevitable for the coming decades, raise concerns regarding the adaptive ability and/or the likely responses of the agricultural sector. The challenges and opportunities facing today’s agriculture within the climate change context are, however, at least twofold: in addition to adapting to a potentially more variable climate, agriculture may also take on the additional role of mitigating GHG emissions—such as providing renewable fuels to replace fossil fuels to some extent [3]. In the US, a large-scale GHG mitigation effort through biofuels production, pursuant to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2), is already unfolding. A question thus arises naturally for the RFS2-relevant US agricultural sector: will climate change make it harder to meet the volume goals set in the RFS2 mandates, considering that both climate change and RFS2 may have significant impacts on US agriculture? Current climate change studies have shown a growing interest in “synergies” between the agriculture-based mitigation and adaptation under climate change and/or
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