Assessing biofuels: Aiming for sustainable development or complying with the market?
Highlights
► Multi-interactions in biomass production for bioenergy are a new paradigm to develop policies. ► Certification and verification schemes are limited to assess broader sustainability issues. ► Improved agricultural and forestry systems for biomass use will boost policies and investment.
Introduction
Since the 1970s the use of biofuels (defined as liquid or gaseous fuel for transport produced from biomass; EC, 2003) has attracted attention for a number of reasons, including concerns about oil dependency, production of “renewable” non-fossil fuels, increasing demand for local rural activities. Additionally, environmental concerns have been raised along with concerns with adherence to international agreements to reduce green house gases (GHG) and dependency on oil fuels (Feehan and Petersen, 2004) The relatively small share of transport fuels currently being provided by biofuels has prompted EU-member states to undertake a raft of initiatives aimed at significantly increasing the proportion in biofuel use in transport. This expansion of biofuel use has, in turn, raised awareness of their potential environmental and social impacts of across all stages in the supply and use chains.
There are also other arguments in favour of the use of biomass in this way, such as security of energy supply, diversification of energy sources, low-carbon emission, an alternative market for agricultural products and rehabilitation of degraded lands. Over the last years several activities have emerged for reviewing the environmental and social impacts of cultivation and production of biofuels, as well as activities regarding certification and sustainability standards (see for instance JEC, 2010, RSB, 2010). However, the current debate focuses on the possible negative social and environmental implications, especially as regards land competition, the questionable reduction of emissions and “the fuel versus food” debate (Diaz-Chavez and Woods, 2008, Lynd et al., 2011).
This paper examines the differences between assessing sustainability in biofuels production in terms of achieving or moving towards sustainable development goals in production areas and providing certification that focuses on market compliance.
Section snippets
Sustainability assessment
Since the original definition of sustainable development in the Brundtland report (WCED, 1987), where the idea was to reconciliate environmental protection and economic development (Dresner, 2002), the concept has undergone changes. Although this concept is widely accepted, worldwide differences in meaning and views still exist. Sustainable development and sustainability are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to maintenance of the resources or a system over time.
Traditionally, the concept
How to assess sustainability in practise and whose sustainability? A framework proposal
Since there are different definitions of sustainability, there are different methods to assess sustainability. According to Dalal-Clayton and Bass (2002), the purpose of measuring and analysing sustainability is to answer essential questions related to how healthy is the ecosystem; how are human activities affecting that particular ecosystem; how is life quality for the population (considering their future generations); is there an equity well-being and the interlinks between these question
Sustainability considerations for production and use of biofuels
A number of issues need to be considered to ensure both the sustainable production and use of biomass when oriented towards energy needs (power and transport) and at the same time reduces GHG emissions. Amongst these are environmental and social concerns (Fig. 1), including the area of land required for energy crops production, which include the effects that the large-scale cultivation of energy crops and use of residues may have on biodiversity, soils, hydrology and landscape (Diaz-Chavez and
Certification schemes and standards. Only a market overview?
Since the enforcement of the 2003 EU Directive on Biofuels and the new Renewables Energy Directive (EC, 2009) there has been a growing concern over the availability of resources such as water and land, and the increasing demand for energy crops to produce them. There has also been a concern about the increasing demand for biofuels imports from developing countries. This increment has been observed mainly from sugarcane, soy, palm oil, rape seed, wood products and other biofuel feedstock (
Is there a way forward?
Certification and verification schemes might contribute to paving the way towards the sustainable production of feedstocks and their transformation to biofuels. Nevertheless, they are limited in terms of what broader sustainability issues can be accounted for especially for the environment and the local population.
As seen in the previous section the majority of the verification systems respond to commercial and legal regulations but cannot assess deeper details that are related to each
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