Reports

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This page lists and links to reports dealing with all aspects of bioenergy, arranged on thematic and geographical basis. Papers whose primary purpose is to advocate a specific policy or approach are in Position papers.

Contents

International

Reports by the United Nations or dealing with international issues (newest first):

  • The Energy Report (PDF file) - The Energy Report, produced by WWF and Ecofys, envisions a possible scenario in which the world’s energy supply is provided by renewable and sustainable sources by 2050; February 2011.
  • Risk governance guidelines for bioenergy policies (PDF file) - This International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) Policy Brief identified several substantial deficits in the current governance of the opportunities and risks of bioenergy, and proposes a number of recommendations for improving the assessment and the management of major risks related to an unsustainable development of bioenergy, and in particular liquid biofuels. October 2008.
  • Bioenergy - UN FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization), April 2005.

Agriculture

  • Global land-use implications of first and second generation biofuel targets by Petr Havlík, Uwe A. Schneider, Erwin Schmid, Hannes Böttcher, Steffen Fritz, Rastislav Skalský, Kentaro Aoki, Stéphane De Cara, Georg Kindermann, Florian Kraxner, Sylvain Leduc, Ian McCallum, Aline Mosnier, Timm Sauer and Michael Obersteiner, April 2010. "In this paper we provide a detailed analysis of the iLUC effect, and further address the issues of deforestation, irrigation water use, and crop price increases due to expanding biofuel acreage. We use GLOBIOM – an economic partial equilibrium model of the global forest, agriculture, and biomass sectors with a bottom-up representation of agricultural and forestry management practices. The results indicate that second generation biofuel production fed by wood from sustainably managed existing forests would lead to a negative iLUC factor, meaning that overall emissions are 27% lower compared to the 'No biofuel' scenario by 2030."

Climate change

  • Biogenic vs. geologic carbon emissions and forest biomass energy production by John S. Gunn, David J. Ganz, and William S. Keeton, September 2011. "This report presents the opinion that this is an inappropriate conceptual basis to assess the atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting of woody biomass energy generation. While there are many other environmental, social, and economic reasons to move to woody biomass energy, we argue that the inferred benefits of biogenic emissions over fossil fuel emissions should be reconsidered."[2]
  • Land Use Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Conventional Oil Production and Oil Sands by Sonia Yeh, Sarah Jordaan, Adam Brandt, Merritt Turetsky, Sabrina Spatari, and David Keith, October 2010. "When contrasting land use GHG intensity of fossil fuel and biofuel production, it is the energy yield that greatly distinguishes the two. Although emissions released from land disturbed by fossil fuels can be comparable or higher than biofuels, the energy yield of oil production is typically 2-3 orders of magnitude higher, (0.33-2.6, 0.61-1.2, and 2.2-5.1 PJ/ha) for conventional oil production, oil sands surface mining, and in situ production, respectively."[3]
  • Greenhouse gas fluxes from tropical peatlands in south-east Asia (PDF) by John Couwenberg, Rene Dommain, and Hans Joosten HANS, June 2010. "This paper provides a review and meta-analysis of available literature on greenhouse gas fluxes from tropical peat soils in south-east Asia. As in other parts of the world, water level is the main control on greenhouse gas fluxes from south-east Asian peat soils. Based on subsidence data we calculate emissions of at least 900 g CO2 m−2 a−1 (∼250 g C m−2 a−1) for each 10 cm of additional drainage depth."[4]
  • The Copenhagen Accord Fact Sheet (PDF) by the National Wildlife Federation, April 2010. This report highlights the outcomes of the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Copenhagan in December of 2009.
    • "While the Copenhagen Accord falls short of this benchmark, it does represent a step forward by acquiring voluntary pledges from both developed and developing nations to make new commitments to address their emissions, allowing some third-party oversight of these actions, and providing crucial “fast start” financing to help the least developed countries that will be the most impacted by climate change. The Copenhagen Accord also marks the first time that major emitting developing countries such as China and India, have put forward pledges to the UN to reduce the future growth of their emissions."[5]
  • Effects of US Maize Ethanol on Global Land Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Estimating Market-mediated Responses by Thomas W. Hertel, Alla A. Golub, Andrew D. Jones, Michael O'Hare, Richard J. Plevin, and Daniel M. Kammen, April 2010. "This article analyzes these releases for maize ethanol produced in the United States. Factoring market-mediated responses and by-product use into our analysis reduces cropland conversion by 72% from the land used for the ethanol feedstock. Consequently, the associated GHG release estimated in our framework is 800 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule (MJ); 27 grams per MJ per year, over 30 years of ethanol production, or roughly a quarter of the only other published estimate of releases attributable to changes in indirect land use."[6]
  • Financing the Response to Climate Change (PDF file) IMF staff position note by Hugh Bredenkamp and Catherine Pattillo, 25 March 2010. "This note outlines a scheme for mobilizing financing to help developing countries confront the challenges posed by climate change. The idea is to create a “Green Fund” with the capacity to raise resources on a scale commensurate with the Copenhagen Accord ($100 billion a year by 2020)."
    • "By providing a unified resource mobilization framework, with up-front agreement on burden-sharing and the capacity to meet the financing needs identified at Copenhagen, the Green Fund could facilitate progress toward a binding global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and allow developing countries to begin scaling up their climate change responses without delay."[7]

Development

  • Biochar: A critical review of science and policy by Biofuelwatch, 2011. "This report takes a critical look at the claims around biochar, reviews the science underlying the claims, provides an overview of what biochar advocates are pushing for in terms of policies and supports, and presents an outline of the companies involved."
  • Poor people’s energy outlook 2010 by Practical Action, 2010. "The report proposes an ecosystem of government, civil society and private organisations working together towards creation of universal energy access by 2030."
    • "This publication will be of interest to anyone seeking to better understand energy access and its role in development at a human scale."

Sustainability

Environmental impacts

  • A review of environmental issues in the context of biofuel sustainability frameworks by M.R. Guariguata, O.R. Masera, F.X. Johnson, G. von Maltitz, N. Bird, P. Tella, R. Martínez-Bravo, 2011. "This report examines how the most developed sustainability frameworks for feedstock production (including biofuels) address key environmental issues. It identifies critical gaps in these frameworks and proposes areas for improvement. The main finding is that the frameworks share broad sustainability principles yet they differ greatly in terms of their comprehensiveness and how they apply specific indicators for environmental issues, particularly with respect to land use change (both direct and indirect), allocation of degraded land for feedstock cultivation, and related accounting of greenhouse gas emissions."
  • Indicators to support environmental sustainability of bioenergy systems (PDF) by Allen C. McBride, Virginia H. Dale, Latha M. Baskaran, Mark E. Downing, Laurence M. Eaton, Rebecca A. Efroymson, Charles T. Garten Jr. , Keith L. Kline, Henriette I. Jager, Patrick J. Mulholland, Esther S. Parish, Peter E. Schweizer, John M. Storey, January 2011. The authors "identify 19 measurable indicators for soil quality, water quality and quantity, greenhouse gases, biodiversity, air quality, and productivity, building on existing knowledge and on national and international programs that are seeking ways to assess sustainable bioenergy. Together, this suite of indicators is hypothesized to reflect major environmental effects of diverse feedstocks, management practices, and post-production processes."
  • Grand Challenges for Life-Cycle Assessment of Biofuels by T. E. McKone, W. W. Nazaroff, P. Berck, M. Auffhammer, T. Lipman, M. S. Torn, E. Masanet, A. Lobscheid, N. Santero, U. Mishra, A. Barrett, M. Bomberg, K. Fingerman, C. Scown, B. Strogen, and A. Horvath, January 2011. The authors "identified seven issues as grand challenges for applying LCA to biofuels. In the subsequent sections of this paper, [they] elaborate on each of these challenges and, where possible, note how progress might be made toward effectively addressing them."
  • Biofuels: indirect land use change and climate impact (PDF) by H.J. Croezen, G.C. Bergsma, M.B.J. Otten and M.P.J. van Valkengoed, June 2010. "The objectives of this study are to compile the available recent literature on ILUC emissions, compare these emissions with the assumed gains of biofuels, assess how ILUC changes the carbon balance of using biofuels and formulate policies to avoid these extra emissions associated with ILUC."
  • The Water Requirements of Biofuels, 2010 in AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment. From the abstract: "We assess the connection between water and energy production and conduct a comparative analysis for estimating the energy return on water invested (EROWI) for several renewable and non-renewable energy technologies using various Life Cycle Analyses. Our results suggest that the most water-efficient, fossil-based technologies have an EROWI one to two orders of magnitude greater than the most water-efficient biomass technologies, implying that the development of biomass energy technologies in scale sufficient to be a significant source of energy may produce or exacerbate water shortages around the globe and be limited by the availability of fresh water."[9]
  • The upfront carbon debt of bioenergy (PDF) by Joanneum Research, May 2010. When a raw material such as wood is burned, "the time needed to re-absorb the CO2 emitted in the atmosphere can be long, depending very much on the source of wood. This delay can create an upfront “carbon debt” that would substantially reduce the capability of bioenergy to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the atmosphere in the short to medium term."

Sustainability standards

  • Evaluating biofuel opportunities from a landscape perspective. "This brief describes three systems for biofuel production and identifies opportunities and risks for biodiversity conservation, rural livelihoods and farm production. How can we manage landscapes to produce greener biofuels that are better for the environment and the people? The brief discusses six landscape design principles and four areas for policy development." from Ecoagriculture Partners, May 2008.

Trade

Regions

Africa

Reports dealing with Africa in general:

Kenya

  • Bioenergy and Poverty in Kenya: Attitudes, Actors and Activities Prepared for Pisces by Practical Action Consulting in Eastern Africa, May 2010. "This report presents the findings of socio-economic baseline surveys carried out by the Eastern Africa office of Practical Action Consulting in Kenya... This was part of a broader baseline data creation exercise carried out across the respective PISCES countries around the same period to help provide a better understanding of some of the current issues relating to bioenergy use, access and delivery at the community level."

Mozambique

South Africa

  • National Biofuels Study (PDF file) - African Sustainable Fuels Centre, 20 March 2007. "An investigation into the feasibility of establishing a biofuels industry in the Republic of South Africa which was prepared to assist in the development of a national strategy."[11]

Tanzania

Asia

Reports dealing with Asia in general:

China

India

Indonesia

Sri Lanka

Thailand

Europe

Reports dealing with the European Union and other European countries:

Biofuels

Biogas

Bioheat

Biomass

Climate change

Policy

Sustainability

Transport


Countries:

Greece

Latin America and the Caribbean

Reports dealing with Latin America and the Carribean in general:

Brazil

Costa Rica

Guyana

North America

United States

Reports dealing with the US:

  • Accounting Framework for Biogenic CO2 Emissions from Stationary Sources by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 27 September 2011. "The purpose of this study is to consider the scientific and technical issues associated with accounting for biogenic CO2 emitted from stationary sources and to develop a framework to account for those emissions. It presents a methodology for 'adjusting' estimates of onsite biogenic CO2 emissions on the basis of information about the carbon cycle."[14]
The March 2010 report by the National Wildlife Federation, Growing a Green Energy Future, examines issues related to the sustainability of biomass utilization in the United States.

Algae

Biofuels

Biodiesel

Biomass

Char

Ethanol

Cellulosic ethanol

Corn ethanol

Climate change

Policy

Renewable energy


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