Bridging Modeling and Certification to Evaluate Low-ILUC-Risk Practices for Biobased Materials with a User-Friendly Tool

Abstract

Biobased materials may help to achieve a renewable, circular economy, but their impact could be similar to those of non-renewable materials. In the case of biofuels, the indirect land use change (ILUC) effects determine whether they can provide sustainability benefits compared to fossil fuels. ILUC modeling estimates have large uncertainties, making them difficult to include in a policy aiming at reducing environmental impacts. The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) II reduced ILUC estimate uncertainties by shifting the focus from ILUC environmental impacts to ILUC risk. Nevertheless, this does not take into account either certifiable additionality practices to reduce the ILUC risk for the production of biobased materials, or biobased materials other than biofuels. Here we propose a simple, user-friendly tool to bridge the gap between ILUC modeling and policy, by estimating the ILUC risk of biobased material production and to assess by how much different additionality practices can reduce that risk at different levels of the value chain. This was done by explicitly including the additionality practices in an ILUC model, simplifying the model to a spreadsheet tool that relates automatically the input provided by the user, which may be a producer or a policy maker, with a certain ILUC risk. We demonstrate the functioning of the tool on two examples: maize production in Iowa and in Romania. In Iowa, maize production is already very intensive, so the additionality practices proposed have little effect on its ILUC risk category, and the low-ILUC-risk-produced maize would amount to 0.03 t ha−1 year−1. In Romania there is ample margin for implementation of additionality practices, and thus a large potential to reduce the ILUC risk category of maize production, with low-ILUC-risk-produced maize amounting to 0.19 t ha−1 year −1.

Um estudo prospectivo da cadeia produtiva do milho no Brasil

“…Na União Europeia (EU), as metas estabelecidas de biocombustíveis iniciaram-se com 10% de energias renováveis no sistema de transporte, em 2020, e foram aumentadas para 14%, até 2030, conforme definido na reformulação da Diretiva de Energias Renováveis da União Europeia (Balugani et al, 2022). No entanto, uma crítica ao biocombustível é o deslocamento de áreas destinadas à produção de alimentos para combustível -feed x fuel -, porém, isso pode ser remediado por meio dos biocombustíveis de segunda geração, que usam os resíduos do milho; assim, em uma mesma área, há tanto a produção de alimentos quanto de combustível (Chen et al, 2017).…”

A Review of Trade-Offs in Low ILUC-Risk Certification for Biofuels—Towards an Integrated Assessment Framework

“…In another outcome of this project, a meta-analysis shows that there are significant opportunities in Europe to grow additional, environmentally friendly oil and lignocellulosic crops for biofuels using sustainable agronomic practices to increase the yield of such crops and to grow biomass on unused, abandoned and degraded land [39]. An outcome of the STAR-ProBio project is a practical, user-friendly tool for estimating the ILUC-risk of individual biomass feedstock producers, which also identifies how the use of certain additionality practices, such as increased agricultural crop yields, could substantially reduce this risk [40]. The project GOLD investigates the production of low ILUC-risk biofuels by growing selected high-yielding lignocellulosic crops on contaminated land, which can be attributed to the additionality practice of biomass cultivation on unused land [41].…”