Summary of approaches to account for and monitor indirect impacts of biofuel production |
Oct 2009
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This study has four elements regarding the indirect impacts of biofuel production:
1 A review of quantification initiatives of indirect impacts of biofuel production.
2 A review of mitigation initiatives of indirect impacts of biofuel production.
3 A review of monitoring initiatives of indirect impacts of biofuel production.
4 Recommendations to the Ministry of VROM on how to deal with indirect impacts.
On point 1 it can be concluded that the reviewed quantification initiatives provide:
• No information on the magnitude of indirect impacts on biodiversity.
• Limited information on the magnitude of indirect impacts on food consumption.
• A wide range of magnitudes of indirect impacts on the greenhouse gas balance of biofuels through land use changes: 30 to 103 gCO2eq/MJ fuel. This wide range of magnitudes is due to different values for key input assumptions used by the quantification initiatives. Although a wide range of quantitative results is found, all initiatives predict the impact to be significant for the total greenhouse gas balance of biofuels.
On point 2 it can be concluded that the reviewed mitigation initiatives show that:
• Only a small amount of mitigation measures currently exist and that these are all still under development.
• Most of the mitigation measures that are in advanced development solely incorporate an indirect land use change factor in the life cycle analysis of biofuels based on their feedstock, providing no incentive to mitigate indirect impacts at the project level, given a certain feedstock.
• The Responsible Cultivation Area initiative led by Ecofys and the Renewable Fuels Association’s initiative are the first to work on pragmatic solutions for feedstock production that has no or a minimised risk of indirect impacts by preventing displacement effects from occurring.
On point 3 it can be concluded that the reviewed monitoring initiatives show that:
• Few initiatives currently exist that try to monitor the direct or indirect impact of biofuels specifically.
• There is a lack of data on the impacts of agriculture in general, e.g. on deforestation.
• It is extremely challenging to link measurable impacts such as deforestation to biofuel production as these impacts occur through market mechanisms that can not be directly measured.
• Some modelling will always be required to link measurable impacts to biofuel production specifically.
• Data availability on biofuels consumed in the EU may improve in the future through information requirements on biofuels in the Renewable Energy Directive.
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