ارزیابی سوخت های زیستی: هدف برای توسعه پایدار یا منطبق با بازار؟

The growing interest in biofuels has led to increasing concern about their wider implications, particularly if grown for transport use in large scale. Such concerns include environmental, social and economic issues. To counterbalance the possible negative effects, a series of measures are being put in place to help their sustainability. Nevertheless, considering the different meanings of sustainability in different parts of the world and the need to expand productive rural activities, the differences between trying to assure a commodity and the benefits or impacts at local level raise the questions between the aims of sustainability and the need to comply with a market. The ideal situation would be to reconcile both aspects, which in practise represent a major challenge for governments and industry. This paper provides an overview on the sustainability assessment of biofuels to consider a possible way forward.

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 and 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 and 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.