Mid Sweden University

miun.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Environmental Impact Assessments: Suitable for supporting assessment of biofuel sustainability?
Chalmers University of Technology.
Chalmers University of Technology.
Chalmers University of Technology.
Linköpings universitet, Centrum för klimatpolitisk forskning.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4484-266X
2011 (English)Report (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
Abstract [en]

The European Union requires that 10% of the energy in the transport sector shall come from renewable sources by 2020. In addition, biofuels used for transport need to fulfill certain sustainability requirements set out in the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). To meet these requirements, the EU will need to produce and import large amounts of sustainable biofuels. Therefore, there is a need for ways to verify the sustainability of imported biofuels, so that unsustainable biofuels can be avoided. One strategy may involve analyzing Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) reports (EIRs) conducted for specific biofuel projects. For EIRs to be useful as such information sources they need to be sufficiently comprehensive in relation to the RED but also sufficiently reliable. In this study, 19 biofuel project EIRs are analyzed with respect to how they cover the RED sustainability considerations. In addition, EIA legislation, requirements, quality, and enforcement are discussed to determine not only whether EIRs can be sufficiently comprehensive, but also sufficiently reliable for supporting information to studies intended to assess the sustainability of biofuels, from an RED perspective. Notable differences between EIRs for different types of projects were found. EIRs for projects including both plantation establishment and the construction of a biofuel plant had better RED coverage than EIRs for projects including either the plantations or the biofuel plant. As might be expected, EIAs for “plantation projects” generally leave out features related to biofuel processing, and EIAs for “biofuel plant” projects generally leave out features related to feedstock production. In general, EIA legislation is insufficient and most target countries seem to have rather low potential to enforce legislation. Several additional EIA-related problems need to be overcome in order for EIRs to be regarded as sufficiently reliable information tools.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Göteborg: Chalmers University of Technology , 2011. , p. 131
Series
Report series for the division of Physical Resource Theory, nr FRT 2011:05. Chalmers University fo Technology ; 05
Keywords [en]
EIA, bioenergy, biofuels, EU, Renewable Energy Directive
National Category
Natural Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-37290OAI: oai:DiVA.org:miun-37290DiVA, id: diva2:1353339
Available from: 2011-12-23 Created: 2019-09-23 Last updated: 2019-09-23Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Link to report

Authority records

Englund, OskarOstwald, Madelene

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Englund, OskarOstwald, Madelene
Natural Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 47 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf