• Energy Research

Biofuels as a renewable source of energy have gained considerable importance in recent years. The use of biofuels is expected to rise since national governments of developed nations like the US and European countries see it as one of the ways to fulfill climate targets and increase the security in their energy supply. Production of biofuels is also expected to rise as developing nations see in biofuels the opportunity for connecting to international markets through supplying a new demand in the energy market.Several studies report on the environmental, social and economic gains and detriments that can arise from increased biofuel production and consumption. However, research that provides insight into the way in which such issues are defined by actors within the product chain is scarce. In this article we analyse how the strategies and value definitions of actors involved in the production and consumption of biofuels lead to specific definitions of sustainability. The empirical material concerns the chain of palm oil production in Colombia and electricity generation in the Netherlands. It is analysed using the method of action-in-context, which allows us to uncover the level and source of diversity of sustainability definitions in the product chain.While the current growth in production of palm oil is definitely buyer driven, the analysis of various activities in the chain shows that several aspects of sustainability are defined in more complex actor fields throughout the product chain. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Purpose: The increasing concern for adverse effects of climate change has spurred the search for alternatives for conventional energy sources. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has increasingly been used to assess the potential of these alternatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The popularity of LCA in the policy context puts its methodological issues into another perspective. This paper discusses how bio-electricity directives deal with the issue of allocation and shows its repercussions in the policy field. Methods: Multifunctionality has been a well-known problem since the early development of LCA and several methods have been suggested to deal with multifunctional processes. This paper starts with a discussion of the most common allocation methods. This discussion is followed by a description of bio-energy policy directives. The description shows the increasing importance of LCA in the policy context as well as the lack of consensus in the application of allocation methods. Methodological differences between bio-energy directives possibly lead to different assessments of bio-energy chains. To assess the differences due to methodological choices in bio-energy directives, this paper applies three different allocation methods to the same bio-electricity generation system. The differences in outcomes indicate the importance of solving the allocation issue for policy decision making. Results and discussion: The case study focuses on bio-electricity from rapeseed oil. To assess the influence of the choice of allocation in a policy directive, three allocation methods are applied: economic partitioning (on the basis of proceeds), physical partitioning (on the basis of energy content), and substitution (under two scenarios). The outcomes show that the climate change score is assessed quite differently; ranging from 0.293 kg to 0.604 kg CO 2 eq/kWh. It is argued that this uncertainty hampers the optimal use of LCA in the policy context. The aim of policy LCAs is different from the aim of LCAs for analysis. Therefore, it is argued that LCAs in the policy context will benefit from a new guideline based on robustness. Conclusions: The case study confirms that the choice of allocation method in policy directives has large influence on the outcomes of an LCA. With the growing popularity of LCA in policy directives, this paper recommends a new guideline for policy LCAs. The high priority of robustness in the policy context makes it an ideal starting point of this guideline. An accompanying dialog between practitioners and commissioners should further strengthen the use of LCA in policy directives.

The European Union (EU) has advocated an emission reduction target for developed countries of 80% to 95% below the 1990 level by 2050, and a global reduction target of 50%. Developing countries have resisted the inclusion of these targets in both the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Copenhagen Accord and Cancún Agreements. This paper analyses what these targets would imply for emission targets, abatement costs and energy consumption of developing countries, taking into account the conditional emission reduction pledges for 2020. An 80% reduction target for developed countries would imply more stringent per capita emission targets for developing countries than developed countries by 2050. Moreover, abatement costs of developing countries would be higher than those of developed countries. An 85% to 90% reduction target for developed countries would result in similar per capita emission targets and abatement costs for developed and developing countries by 2050. Total reduction targets for developing countries would range from 30% to 40% below 2005 levels by 2050 and from 30% to 35% above 2005 levels by 2030. The 2030 target for China would be 40% to 45% above 2005 levels, compared to a target for the EU of 45% to 50% below 1990 and for the United States of America (USA) 30% to 35% below 1990. Emission target trajectories for Brazil, South Africa and China would peak before 2025 and for India by around 2025. From the analysis, we may conclude that from the viewpoint of developing countries either developed countries increase their target above 85%, and/or make substantial side-payments.

This study provides a conceptual framework for exploring the bargaining space within international climate negotiations based on important economic, political and environmental considerations. Based on it, we analyse combinations of the proposed emission reduction ranges for Annex I countries as a group (25–40% below 1990 levels) and non-Annex I as a group (15–30% below baseline) by 2020 to limit global warming to 2 °C. We use results of the FAIR model with costs estimates based on two energy system models. We conclude that the range of targets that comply with a set of criteria for economic, political and environmental considerations is smaller than that by environmental considerations alone. More specifically, we find that according to our criteria, a 30% Annex I reduction target below 1990 levels, combined with a 20% non-Annex I reduction target below baseline emission levels (i.e. 20 to 30% above 2005 levels), is the only combination of targets fulfilling all our criteria for both energy system models. Otherwise, reaching the 2 °C target becomes less likely, technically infeasible, or non-Annex I abatement costs are likely to exceed those of Annex I, a result, which we consider less plausible from a political viewpoint in our conceptual framework.

In this analysis, life cycle environmental burdens and total costs of ownership (TCO) of current (2017) and future (2040) passenger cars with different powertrain configurations are compared. For all vehicle configurations, probability distributions are defined for all performance parameters. Using these, a Monte Carlo based global sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the input parameters that contribute most to overall variability of results. To capture the systematic effects of the energy transition, future electricity scenarios are deeply integrated into the ecoinvent life cycle assessment background database. With this integration, not only the way how future electric vehicles are charged is captured, but also how future vehicles and batteries are produced. If electricity has a life cycle carbon content similar to or better than a modern natural gas combined cycle powerplant, full powertrain electrification makes sense from a climate point of view, and in many cases also provides reductions in TCO. In general, vehicles with smaller batteries and longer lifetime distances have the best cost and climate performance. If a very large driving range is required or clean electricity is not available, hybrid powertrain and compressed natural gas vehicles are good options in terms of both costs and climate change impacts. Alternative powertrains containing large batteries or fuel cells are the most sensitive to changes in the future electricity system as their life cycles are more electricity intensive. The benefits of these alternative drivetrains are strongly linked to the success of the energy transition: the more the electricity sector is decarbonized, the greater the benefit of electrifying passenger vehicles.

As part of the Copenhagen Accord, individual countries have submitted greenhouse gas reduction proposals for the year 2020. This paper analyses the implications for emission reductions, the carbon price, and abatement costs of these submissions. The submissions of the Annex I (industrialised) countries are estimated to lead to a total reduction target of 12-18% below 1990 levels. The submissions of the seven major emerging economies are estimated to lead to an 11-14% reduction below baseline emissions, depending on international (financial) support. Global abatement costs in 2020 are estimated at about USD 60-100 billion, assuming that at least two-thirds of Annex I emission reduction targets need to be achieved domestically. The largest share of these costs are incurred by Annex I countries, although the costs as share of GDP are similar for Annex I as a group and the seven emerging economies as a group, even when assuming substantial international transfers from Annex I countries to the emerging economies to finance their abatement costs. If the restriction of achieving two-thirds of the emission reduction target domestically is abandoned, it would more than double the international carbon price and at the same time reduce global abatement costs by almost 25%.

We assess the fairness and ambition level of the EU’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) of reducing domestic greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 % relative to 1990. For this, we calculate which reduction targets for other major emitting economies are comparable to the EU target, given widely diverging effort-sharing approaches. We introduce a novel approach in which the EU target is taken as starting point for allocating emission reductions to other regions. Under this approach, the global emission level is an outcome of the analysis, contrary to standard effort-sharing approaches in which the global climate goal is specified. We find that the INDC of the EU, if other regions take on comparable targets based on a differentiated convergence per-capita approach, could be sufficient for a global 2 °C pathway. However, if emissions are allocated according to a historical responsibility approach, the global emission level in 2030 is much higher than the level of 2 °C pathways. Furthermore, we conclude that India, Mexico, and Brazil have more ambitious INDCs than the EU according to both a differentiated convergence per-capita approach and a historical responsibility approach.