A review of social sustainability considerations among EU-approved voluntary schemes for biofuels, with implications for rural livelihoods
Highlights
► Among 7 voluntary schemes approved by EC-RED for biofuel, social sustainability is sorely lacking. ► 2 Schemes lacking any social sustainability criteria collectively cover all feedstock/regions. ► The strong climate metric effectively sidelines development aspirations of southern producers. ► Only one of 7 standards will leverage the industry's potential as a stimulus to rural development. ► Policies in consumer markets are critical to give teeth to industry-led sustainability schemes.
Introduction
Recent years have witnessed rapid growth in demand for biofuels in the global transport sector. This trend is driven in large part by increasing concerns over global warming and by the growing economic imperative to reduce the dependency on external fossil fuels, a concern amplified by the more recent instability in the global oil markets. The commercial production of biofuels is not a new phenomenon or a product of recent technological advances. The domestic blending of biofuels for use in the transportation sector has, for example, been part of initiatives to diversify the energy matrix since the energy crises in the 1970s in countries such as Brazil and the United States. Yet with need for long-term fiscal support, lack of political resolve has until recently inhibited sector development in most parts of the world.
In recent years a significant number of industrialized countries and emerging economies have adopted measures to promote domestic biofuel production and uptake, in a renewed commitment to the renewable energy economy (U.S. Congress, 2007, Yang et al., 2009). One of the most significant and comprehensive of initiatives to promote the incorporation of renewable energy sources (including biofuels), is Directive 2009/28/EC adopted by the European Parliament on April 23, 2009, commonly referred to as the EU Renewable Energy Directive (EU-RED).1 The EU-RED mandates that 20% of the EU's energy consumption consist of renewable sources by 2020, as proposed in the Renewable Energy Road Map of 2007 (EC, 2007). As part of the EU-RED, all member states are required to derive 10% of energy in the transportation sector from renewable energy sources by 2020—anticipated to be derived for the most part, though not exclusively, from biofuels. In order to minimize the negative environmental impacts of biofuel production and ensure compliance with the Kyoto Protocol (and according to some, to protect its own inefficient biofuels industry) (Afionis and Stringer, 2012), the EU-RED promulgates a set of biofuel sustainability criteria with which economic operators must comply for biofuels to contribute towards the 2020 target.2 One of the means through which operators can gain access to this policy-induced market opportunity is to certify their operations under one of the ‘voluntary schemes’ approved by the EC.
As the first and most progressive regulatory innovation of its kind, the adoption of the biofuel sustainability criteria throughout the EU is an important step towards incentivizing biofuel producers to adopt environmentally responsible production practices. With the EU projected to become the largest importer of biofuels by 2020 – expecting to import 15.9 billion liters per year, compared to 10.8 billion litres by the United States (Bowyer, 2010, OECD/FAO, 2010) – the sustainability criteria are likely to have significant long-term global relevance. Yet with so much attention given to environmental dimensions of sustainability in EU-RED, and to energy security and climate mitigation within existing bioenergy certification schemes (Scarlat and Dallemand, 2011), what are the likely consequences for social sustainability?
Although the EU-RED generates new trade and investment opportunities for developing countries with abundant agro-ecologically suitable land, it also carries a host of socio-economic risks—particularly where domestic policies are weak or poorly enforced (Jumbe, 2009, Zhang, 2008). Biofuel feedstock plantations could infringe on poorly protected (e.g. customary) rights to land and resources, leading to the displacement of traditional land use systems (German et al., 2011b, German et al., 2011c). They could also displace or divert food crops to the fuel sector, inducing food price inflation and/or supply constraints (FAO, 2008a), or lead to the abuse of international labor rights in countries with weak regulations and poor enforcement (De Schutter, 2009). The biofuel sector could also simply develop in ways that contravene national policy aspirations (Schut et al., 2010). Against this background, this paper assesses the social dimensions of the first seven biofuel sustainability schemes approved by the European Commission (EC) for verifying compliance of economic operators with EU-RED sustainability criteria. By so doing, we highlight the extent to which a push towards environmental sustainability could undermine rather than advance the very rural development aims justifying the sector's expansion in the global South.
Section snippets
Biofuels/bioliquids and the Renewable Energy Directive (RED)
The overarching objective of the EU-RED is to ensure that at least 20% of the EU's gross final consumption of energy in 2020 consists of renewable energy. In order to account for country-specific capacities to adopt renewable sources, incorporation targets differ by Member State—Sweden's target, for example, is set at 49%, while Malta's target is only 10% (EC, 2009, Annex 1A). However, the EC has mandated each Member State to ensure that the share of energy from renewable sources in all forms
Conceptual framework
A precise definition of social sustainability that is both comprehensive and operational is difficult to find (Foot and Ross, 2004). Much of the recent attention on social dimensions of sustainability derive from the Brundtland Commission's definition of sustainable development—namely, “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987: 8). Sustainability has since been widely recognized to include social,
Treatment of social sustainability by approved voluntary schemes
This section evaluates the scope of the different sustainability schemes, along with their likely procedural effectiveness.
Discussion and conclusions: implications of EU-RED for the social sustainability of biofuels
On the basis of the scope of the evaluated standards, two out of the seven initially approved voluntary schemes (Abengoa and 2BSvs) take a minimum compliance approach with EU-RED and are devoid of any commitment to social sustainability. As both of these standards are global in scope and collectively cover all biofuel feedstocks, this lapse could in theory lead to a situation in which all biofuels complying with Member State commitments to renewable energy lack social sustainability.17
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