BIOMASS HUB

Adhering to social, environmental, and economic criteria will be key to developing biofuels. This is Part I in a multipart series examining the relationship between biofuels and sustainability standards.

In the world of biofuels, the search for sustainability guidelines is on. Encompassing the social, environmental, and economic aspects of renewable fuel production from a variety of feedstocks, emerging standards seek to bring clarity and relevance to a materializing, but amorphous collection of stakeholder efforts.

These include:

• Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB)
• Council on Sustainable Biomass Production (CSBP)
• Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)

Sustainability — more specifically, sustainable development — has come a long way from when the term was first brought into focus by the Brundtland Commission’s now famous report, Our Common Future (1987).  The Commission defined the concept as follows:

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

What the definition lacked was actionable criteria for specific development. And so, across industries, standards have begun to emerge that put the ideals set forth by the UN into action within the context of industry-specific realities.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, determined that there were three basic, generally applicable, and equally weighted interrelated pillars of sustainability:

• Economic: Economic growth is vital for technological advancement and the investment required to improve social services.
• Environment: Industrial growth and consumption should advance in a way that does not diminish the world’s natural resources.
• Social: People should be included in discussions and decisions that will impact on their communities.

These pillars form the backbone of biofuel sustainability standards. As a replacement for fossil fuels, maximizing the environmental and social value of biofuels is of critical importance for the industry’s future. Meanwhile, it’s market potential hinges on being cost competitive with fossil fuels. These three interrelated goals must stay in balance for biofuels to remain sustainable.

Around the world, the production of biofuels have run into difficult challenges and brought sustainability goals squarely into focus.

Globally, efforts to negotiate climate regimes, regulate emissions from air travel, prevent deforestation, and secure water and food resources are elevating the standards by which biofuels must be produced.

In the EU, battles over biofuel mandates are linked to multinational land grabs in the developing world as well as debates over the environmental implications of palm oil production (see The New Energy Geopolotics: the Biofuel-Land Nexus; Fuels Made from Crops Struggle to Achieve Sustainability).

In the US, policies to promote ethanol production are running afoul of tightening indirect land use regulations elucidated in EPA’s RFS 2.0 and California’s LCFS.

And the list goes on…

Within this context, the importance of sustainability criteria to the business community is becoming increasingly about market access as companies begin to commercialize conversion processes. Multinationals that violate social and environmental standards — however they are defined — risk backlash from local stakeholders, or worse, being kicked out of host countries altogether.

Although sustainability standards will be voluntary for the foreseeable future, it appears regulatory efforts around the externalities associated with biofuel production are growing teeth (see Reigning in GHGs: Emerging Life Cycle Obligations).

Increasingly, regulatory regimes are incorporating sustainability into an actionable framework. Adhering to sustainability standards is not just about maintaining goodwill, but also about mitigating exposure to legal challenges.

Unsustainable feedstocks and fuel pathways run the risk of being excluded from the emerging biofuel markets if they don’t meet increasingly restrictive standards. Within the context of climate change, multinational claims about greenhouse gas mitigation have given rise to stakeholder lawsuits. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) messaging for companies involved in biofuel production must pay heed to these emerging realities.

More on biomass sustainability.

Image: Flickr/Andrew Stawarz