With the rapid growth of biofuel production and consumption and the proliferation of policy decisions supporting this expansion, concerns about the biofuel sector’s environmental and social impacts are increasing. Consequently, a range of actors – among them governments, multilateral institutions, nongovernmental organisations and multistakeholder industry groups – have created sustainability frameworks, some mandatory, others voluntary. This report examines how the most developed sustainability frameworks for feedstock production (including biofuels) address key environmental issues. It identifies critical gaps in these frameworks and proposes areas for improvement. The main finding is that the frameworks share broad sustainability principles yet they differ greatly in terms of their comprehensiveness and how they apply specific indicators for environmental issues, particularly with respect to land use change (both direct and indirect), allocation of degraded land for feedstock cultivation, and related accounting of greenhouse gas emissions. In the absence of sufficient hard data with which to gauge the effectiveness of existing sustainability frameworks, the report notes that the standards of these frameworks are not sufficient to mitigate the effects of direct and indirect land use change and promote environmental conservation. A key recommendation is that such standards should be complemented by other policy instruments. Furthermore, as sustainability frameworks are only a means to an end, they must be supported by practical guidance, effective interpretation of standards, principles and criteria, and development of verifiable indicators, along with the provision of appropriate tools, approaches and capacity building activities.

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Law - Public Law / Miscellaneous, grade: 1,3, University of Groningen, language: English, abstract: Climate change and climate protection can be considered as the most controversial and most discussed topics in the 21st century. Especially, since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its 4th Assessment Report on Climate Change in 2007 stating that climate change is indeed mainly caused by human activities. Hence, policy-makers all over the world are taking responsibility for climate protection in order to compensate for society’s faults. 1 The European Union sees itself as one of the driving forces behind fighting climate change and is keen to create and encourage policies or developments that might support their efforts. As proposed in the Lisbon and Gothenburg in 2000 and 2001, the European Union wants to be the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy with a sustainable growth, more social cohesion as well as respect for the environment. One of the opportunities to achieve this objective is bioenergy, or in particular biofuels, which may allow for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, more energy security as well as the promotion of sustainable development globally and the creation of new markets. Biofuels can be defined as solid, liquid or gas fuel consisting of, or derived from biomass, which is composed of living and recently dead biological material. The best-known products are bioethanol and biodiesel, which are first generation biofuels derived from renewable resources, in particular food crops. Second generation biofuels, e.g. lignocellulosic biomass, vary in the fact that they are manufactured from non-food crops. To use this opportunity, the European Union crowned its preceding efforts with respect to renewable energy sources like biofuels with the release of the ambitious climate and energy policy package in January 2008. It contained various proposals for Directives including binding targets for greenhouse gas reductions, energy savings and the share of renewable energy in the total energy consumption. As a result of the long-term policy support covered by the European Union, the biofuels production has increased rigorously.

Biofuels are promoted as a type of renewable energy from biomass that replaces fossil fuels in transportation, in an attempt to achieve the three-fold objectives of energy security, rural development, and GHG emission reductions. However, the increased consumption and production of biofuels have been increasingly subject to criticism for their potential negative impacts on environmental and socio-economic sustainability, and these impacts could be intertwined and have implications ranging from local to global scales. Concerns over sustainability of biofuels have already led to regulatory measures particularly for biofuels in various legal systems, but the cross-cutting and multi-scale nature of the sustainability issue increases the complexity of regulation. In this context, this book is dedicated to a comparative analysis on the state-of-the affairs of the regulatory approaches to sustainability of biofuels in the international, EU, and Chinese legal frameworks, examining whether they may inclusively address sustainability concerns in environmental and socio-economic dimensions. This book finally concludes with observations from the comparative analysis, on the premise of which recommendations are made regarding the prospect for an inclusive regulatory approach to sustainability of biofuels taking account of the existing harmonisation, integration, transplantation, and convergence effects at different levels.

Environmental, Economic and Policy Aspects of Biofuels provides a timely summary of the current issues contributing to the policy debates on this emerging and important topic. The authors make several key conclusions: - Biofuels are diverse and evolving. The next generation of biofuels has the potential to provide improved net benefits but requires significant technological breakthroughs. - Greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits vary significantly across various types of biofuels and are dependent on market conditions and policy situation. - While biofuel improves the welfare of gasoline consumers and food producers, it has a significant negative affect on food consumers, especially the poor. - A diverse set of policies, which have been introduced or proposed, impact biofuels directly including subsidies, mandates, and regulation of carbon content of fuels. However, current policies do not provide incentives that align private and social welfare. - Much of the impact assessments of biofuels thus far are ex-ante estimates based on either optimization or equilibrium models. There is a lack of ex-post econometric analysis of the marginal impact of biofuels and biofuel policies on the economy. And the structural relationships between agriculture, the energy sector, and the environment in the context of biofuels have hardly been studied. The biofuel policy debate is likely to be an ongoing one in the near future and Environmental, Economic and Policy Aspects of Biofuels should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding this diverse and growing literature.

While energy prices, energy security, and climate change are front and center in the national media, these issues are often framed to the exclusion of the broader issue of sustainability-ensuring that the production and use of biofuels do not compromise the needs of future generations by recognizing the need to protect life-support systems, promote economic growth, and improve societal welfare. Thus, it is important to understand the effects of biofuel production and use on water quality and quantity, soils, wildlife habitat and biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, public health, and the economic viability of rural communities.

Biofuels global emergence in the last two decades is met with increased concerns over climate change and sustainable development. This report addresses the core issue of biofuel sustainability of biofuels and related feedstocks, drawing from a wide range of sustainability related studies, reports, policy initiatives. The report critically examines the economic, environmental and social sustainability dimensions of biofuels and review the major certification initiatives, schemes and regulations. In doing so, the report relies on extensive review of a number of country case studies covering a broad range of current biofuel-feedstocks systems. The report analysis clearly distinguish feedstock efficiency (in terms of biofuel yields per unit of land) from sustainability, especially under limiting resource (irrigated water) or sensitive areas (carbon stocks). Also, long run economic viability depend on the future policy support, technical innovations in biofuel systems, economics of biofuel supply and demand and trade-offs between food and energy uses as well as feedstock productivity gains. Biofuels can present both advantages and risks for environmental sustainability; the latter being often difficult to measure or monitor and may conflict with economic sustainability unless great strides in productivity gains are achieved. Social sustainability is the weakest link in current biofuel certification schemes owing to intrinsic local factors and as efforts target more few negative social impacts; much less focus is placed on inclusive processes that strengthen marginal stockholders participation and benefits. Biofuel certification schemes need to be more smallholder inclusive, perhaps through policy initiatives. Finally, poor developing countries, especially with abundant land and biomass production potential, need to prioritise food security and poverty reduction. In many cases, biofuel models that encourage small scale integrated bioenergy systems may offer higher rural development impacts. FDI-induced larger-scale biofuel projects, on the other hand, may be suitable in those situations where countries have sufficient industrial capacity, besides land and biomass potential, and when these biofuel projects can be fully integrated into domestic energy strategies that do not conflict with food production potential and food security.

This open access book presents a comprehensive analysis of biofuel use strategies from an interdisciplinary perspective using sustainability science. This interdisciplinary perspective (social science-natural science) means that the strategies and policy options proposed will have significant impacts on the economy and society alike. Biofuels are expected to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, revitalizing economies in agricultural communities and alleviating poverty. However, despite these anticipated benefits, international organizations such as the FAO, OECD and UN have published reports expressing concerns that biofuel promotion may lead to deforestation, water pollution and water shortages. The impacts of biofuel use are extensive, cross-sectoral and complex, and as such, comprehensive analyses are required in order to assess the extent to which biofuels can contribute to sustainable societies. Applying interdisciplinary sustainability science concepts and methodologies, the book helps to enhance the establishment of a sustainable society as well as the development of appropriate responses to a global need for urgent action on current issues related to biofuels.